


Bite To Death

by Ourliazo



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, BAMF Hibari Kyouya, BAMF Namimori, Everyone Loves Hibari Kyouya, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Hibari Is The Deus Ex Machina, It's 'Infestation', M/M, Training Zombies Because You're Bored
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-23
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2018-10-09 14:23:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 34
Words: 38,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10414140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ourliazo/pseuds/Ourliazo
Summary: It's the zombie apocalypse for about an hour, and then Hibari Kyouya happens. During the terrifyingly efficient takeover of the world some familiar faces trickle in to the Namimori safe zone. Starting with, but not limited to, a couple of Estraneo escapees and a whole bunch of mafia weirdos.





	1. I'm

The screams and stampede of feet reach Shoichi, right through the walls of his house and straight into his head, conjuring scenes of horror and gore mostly copied from slasher films and… well… zombie movies.

Shoichi's sister hasn't stopped crying since her panicked phone call to her boyfriend cut off abruptly. His mother is doing slightly better, rushing around the house to collect last minute supplies, while his father is trying to gather the sports equipment shoved in the garage to use as weapons.

Shoichi himself has a backpack with his laptop but he's foregone any supplies or weapon or any kind of panic really. It seems that even his usual stomach aches have disappeared under the force of his complete and utter belief that he won't last the day.

It's been a few hours since the first trickle of information came through about a new virus, highly infectious and fatal. The news skipped past it quickly, uncaring, and moved on to a story about baby giraffes.

Stretched over the next day were reports about a few isolated incidences of cannibalism. That struck a chord with the geek inside Shoichi and he immediately started researching it only to find nothing at all about the cause. He tried searching for that news segment again but even the official website had no mention – like someone took out the announcement.

So he turned to the chat rooms.

And had a stomach ache.

The people were frantic and terrified, posting desperate cries for help and pictures of stumbling, bloodied figures who leapt on anything they could get between their teeth.

It was the zombie fucking apocalypse.

He rushed down the stairs and screamed for his family to pack the essentials before stumbling to the kitchen and snatching up a wickedly sharp butcher's knife. This was around the time that his father half tackled him to get the knife away and then dragged him to the couch to explain.

So Shoichi laid out the information and his family rolled their eyes, citing that strangers on the internet weren't exactly the most trustworthy sources and that it was probably a prank. He calmed down enough to think it through, but that didn't explain the news website.

His sister gets the call then, and things kind of spiral. The TV channels cut out and get replaced with an official declaring that people should stay indoors and that the situation is under control.

It's quite obviously not.

Emergency services are overwhelmed with calls and the streets are flooded with cars getting out of Namimori and people looting stores for supplies.

Shoichi's mother, the only one who watches C-rate horror films with him, declares that staying in the house is tantamount to suicide. That was an hour ago, but the family always thinks of new things to pack or situations to plan for and nothing gets done.

The curtains, drawn tight, shudder as something hits the glass. They freeze. The slam comes again, and again, and again.

Shoichi sits down on the couch and sighs. He's had a good run, really.

Then the window shatters, curtains ripping as the bloodied figure with milk white eyes and black sludge pouring out of it's mouth falls through.

His parents kick into gear. His father shoves baseball and cricket bats into their hands and his mother simply drops the packs, deemed a dead weight, and orders them out the back door in a stern voice as she approaches the thing missing a whole leg and a large portion of the torso.

Shoichi follows orders at a lazy stroll, his sister beside him and finally not crying anymore – instead, she's screaming. Their father reaches back to grab her arm in comfort, other hand clutching tightly at the baseball bat.

They move quickly through the backyard and reach the fence. Shoichi's mother strides across the garden after them, white blouse splattered with red, and soon the last defence between them and the insanity is unlocked.

They break into a sprint when they reach the road, ducking and weaving around anyone they encounter. Cars are abandoned, doors half open and even bodies still strapped in with chunks taken out of them. People are calling out for loved ones, the same names repeating over and over, or they're dating past with bags full of food and medical supplies.

They encounter a few… infected as Shoichi blindly follows his father. Most ignore them, content with the half devoured food they already have, while some rush past and tackle the unfortunate ones.

Their luck runs out when they take a left into a side street, just a narrow passage meant to cut time when walking, blockaded by two high walls.

A group of three take the corner at a run and charge the family with teeth snapping. Shoichi's father turns back in panic, shoving his children ahead, but an even larger group of five come from the other end, slamming into the wall in their haste to turn down the small walkway. They topple over each other, and the snapping of bone cuts through the air, but all of them are up again not half a second later.

Three of the redheads take up solid stances, with weapons raised. Shoichi, on the other hand, watches this all with glazed eyes. He knows they're out numbered, that none of them are fit enough to out run the zombies, and not important enough to be rescued.

His mother takes down one and his sister swings at a second, while his father tries his best to coat the ground with brain matter. But it's eight against four and they're already struggling.

Shoichi raises his cricket bat in time to shove it between the teeth of one, and gets slammed back against the wall for all his trouble. The strength is incredible and Shoichi grits his teeth, ducking when a half chewed hand lashes out at his head.

He twists his head to the side, pressing back against the wall as hard as he can to avoid those teeth. Globs of black gore splatter across his face as the zombie jerks and slams itself against the bat.

Shoichi has already acknowledged he's going to die, but right now the only thing he can think of is his desperation to live.

His mind kicks in, thinking of his inventions; of the miniature robots with the firepower of a tank. He wipes that away, bracing his shoulders and locking his arms against the creature.

He snaps to the weapons he does have which is also a dead end so he locks onto people he has and their abilities. His family runs by his thoughts but over the zombie's shoulder he sees them in much the same position as he is – cornered and hopeless.

So Shoichi expands. He flicks through neighbours and school mates before landing on the Disciplinary Committee. Perfect. He calculates in a split second and slams his leg up into the zombie's thigh, just so he can stomp down on a knee in an almost exact copy of a take-down last Wednesday.

The crack resounds through the shortcut and the zombie topples to the side – not down, not by a long shot. However, before he can raise the bat for a killing blow, another almost immediately takes its place.

The brief moment of triumph is crushed when the next one bites straight through the cricket bat and lunges for his face. A scream rips from his throat and Shoichi throws his hands up, squeezing his eyes shut.

There's a crunch and a light brush of fabric skates along his arm. Then comes a series of rapid cracks, half muffled and moving further away. Shoichi lowers his arms and peeks out.

His family are gasping for breath, covered in gore and running solely on adrenalin. The eight zombies have been scattered through the path like fallen leaves, heads cracked open neatly and completely still.

Hibari Kyouya glances over his shoulder as his jacket settles around him again, tonfa spiked and barely any silver showing past the red, but not a drop of gore on the teenager. "You're late for school," the Chairman says.

"Sorry, Hibari," Shoichi blurts out automatically, voice more of a squeak than anything.

A pause, and then-

"What are you still doing here, herbivore?" Kyouya drawls. "Go."

Shoichi stumbles in his haste to comply, grabbing at his family's hands and hauling them away from the teenager and towards the school as fast as he can.


	2. sorry

"Dad!" Kensuke screams, not in panic or as a plea.

No, this is entirely out of anger.

The kendo captain stands in a street full of chaos, gripping his little brother's hand tightly in his own with a sword in the other. Opposite, his father looks wide eyed and terrified, cut off mid speech.

"Dad," Kensuke grits out. "If we leave Namimori we're all dead."

"We can't stay at home, son!" the father snaps back.

They both pause for a moment, the mother's face of pure shock flashing through their minds, right before the grandfather bites down.

Kensuke curses when his little brother starts crying again. The poor nine-year-old is breaking and the kendo captain doesn't have time to duct tape the cracks.

"We're going to Hibari," Kensuke says in a calm tone, pulling his brother closer as he turns to leave. "You can leave, but I'm not letting my brother die."

"What makes you think a middle schooler can help you?" the father sighs, but hoists the duffel bag higher and keeps close to his children protectively as they take off at a run.

The sounds of fighting can be heard up ahead, and over houses grows the sight of Namimori middle school.

With snipers lining the roof.

"Oh, you beautiful, bloodthirsty animal," Kensuke whispers to himself with a chuckle.

The three round a pileup of cars and see the Disciplinary Committee posted along the high gate with an assortment of melee weapons at their disposal. The front entrance is wide open, admitting panicked people, carrying bags and always splattered with gore.

A mass of DC members hover around the open entry way, helping injured inside and picking off the infected chasing them. Inside the school itself, swarms of people can be seen rushing about, while outside has large tents set up with even more people.

Kensuke briefly wonders what will happen if there's no more room left. Will the Disciplinary Committee simply stop letting people inside? After all, Hibari Kyouya cares more for the territory itself than citizens or even buildings. The keno captain could even imagine the Chairman happily napping on the rooftop, in a town filled with zombies.

So why bother caring for the herbivores?

"Mochida!" a kendo club member calls out as the family nears. "We could use some help with defence."

Kensuke nods, passing his brother's hand to the father and slipping the backpack over as well. Both family members look like they're going to protest.

"I'll come find you two after I've had my fun," he promises with a smile. "Go inside, find your friends," he urges his little brother, and eventually both continue inside the gates, alongside a red headed family.

Kensuke turns to the girl that called out to him and they slip in among the DC.

* * *

He doesn't know how many hours he spent fending off attacks, but quite a pile of true corpses have gathered in the streets. The panic started almost around sunrise, and the Mochida family finally started moving around nine in the morning.

A question to the nearest watch wearing person and he suddenly feels the hours weighing him down. It's one in the afternoon.

Kensuke falls back from the front lines to take a break, someone who already had their strength back taking his place. He leans against the school's gate, the metal bars pressing into his shoulders, and simply takes the chance to breathe.

Since he arrived, more people have swarmed into the school in droves and more tents have been set up but even then, it’s overcapacity. He doesn't know much about what's going on inside, but at the entrance, bottles of water and bread have been dropped off about every half hour.

Volunteers have also skyrocketed, enabling the small group at the gate to expand outwards at least two blocks in any direction, circling the school entirely.

The flow of zombies and humans have both slowed down, and now most of the outside protectors are starting to head back into the school, closing the perimeter for now until orders arrive.

Kensuke glances around but he hasn't seen the Chairman at all since the outbreak. However, he has overheard that Hibari Kyouya is off collecting large groups of infected near the empty factories on the border of Namimori and Kokuyo, so the school isn't overrun with sheer numbers.

A couple of stories from survivors about Beethoven being played at ground shaking levels seems to corroborate this story.

"Yo, Mochida," comes a familiar voice.

Kensuke turns to see the baseball star wander in from whichever street he chose, a bright smile on his face and clothes damp, the gore especially blatant on the teenager's shirt.

"White was a bad choice," Kensuke snickers and gets a shrug in return.

"I like it actually," Takeshi admits, plucking at his shirt. "I look badass, don't I? Dyed in the blood of my enemies."

Kensuke has to pause a bit.

Takeshi chuckles and waves off the wary face. "Joking, joking." He stoops and snatches up a water bottle from the box sitting just inside the gate, gulping down the entire thing almost in one go. "Ah man," Takeshi sighs. "It's going to be a lot of work taking over Namimori again."

"You think?" Kensuke muses. "The zombies have stopped coming."

"That's because Hibari has them," Takeshi answers casually.

"So he is collecting them with Beethoven?"

"Actually," Takeshi begins with a smirk. "I heard it was the Nami-chuu anthem."

Kensuke gapes at the baseballer and then doubles over laughing.


	3. that

Kusakabe Tetsuya steps up to the podium and clears his throat, instantly gaining the attention of the milling crowd packed into the school's hall. This will be the last group to organise.

"Thank you for being patient," he starts off with. "I know it's been a very long week, and things have been disorganised. I won't take up too much of your time but we all need to be on the same page to work cohesively."

"First of all, the DC have posted evacuation plans all over the school, please take the time to read and memorise them. Secondly, it's true that the school is over populated right now so some people will have to sleep outside. If you are not sick or injured, I'd like to ask that you take the sleeping bags provided and set up near the school walls."

Tetsuya takes a breath and scans the crowd. They're tired and dirty and hungry but the worst is over and those issues can be addressed.

"The next point to address is the supplies. There has already been a successful trip for more hospital supplies, and by the end of the week, new clothes will be brought in and of course food."

A few relieved sighs come from the audience and light chatter starts up.

"Any new information about the rest of Japan and the world will be posted on the main news boards around the cafeteria, but any information you've gathered could be helpful so please don't be afraid to visit the Math staff room and talk to the people there, as they run the system."

The quiet chatter turns to full blown talking as the people gossip amongst themselves. Tetsuya holds back a sigh and raises his hand. They shut up immediately.

"Thank you. The DC have organised classes for applied first aide and general physical defence from beginner level to expert. If you want to participate or even run a class, please apply to the Science staff room. For those of you with actual job experience like in IT, construction, or whatever field you work in, please offer your experience to the Social Sciences staff room."

A few people look considering, or were even mouthing the staff room names to not forget.

"Lastly, for those of you who want to work with the outside on supply runs or as a guard, head to the Physical Education staff room. There is a certain level of experience needed with regards to such a position, but again, training is available for anyone."

Testsuya leans back from the microphone. "Are there any immediate questions? General ones can be answered in the teachers' lounge."

Hands shoot up and Tetsuya picks a meek looking person first to get into the flow of things.

"Is it true that scouting groups have been sent to the hospital?" he asks in a quiet voice.

"Yes, they have," Testsuya readily admits. "In fact I received word before this meeting that a plan has been organised already. You, with the grey hat."

"What do you mean by plan? Are we getting more supplies or…?"

"The takeover will be complete by Thursday tomorrow, while the lockdown to secure it will take at least until Sunday. So sometime next week the injured will be moved and beds will be open to others as well."

The hall practically erupts into sound, people talking over each other in excitement. Tetsuya keeps his neutral expression but inside he's bemoaning the need to play nice with the people. He wasn't serious when he told the Chairman they needed to be more open with their operations.

Up until now, they've kept everything quiet; the scouting parties, the small Special Forces that actively hunt, and even the supply runs were relatively secret.

It's not like the DC is all that bothered about how society actually runs or what rules there are – they simply accept orders from the Chairman and move to complete them swiftly. But now there are people who actually complain about not being told when groups go out, like DC are expected to care.

Tesuya sighs inwardly but decides to keep going because it seems to distract them well enough. "Not only the hospital," he begins in an even tone, which makes them hush to hear any more information. "We're also planning to secure the three main hotels and move people there as the building is more accommodating than this school."

They look like they're about to start up again so Tetsuya rushes the next part out. "The major radio station is also a priority to get information to any other survivors, while the shopping mall is being converted into a more secure supplies storage, but that's a while off."

It's almost dead silent at the gush of information after a week of vague answers. The actual knowledge seems to be a shock as well. 

Tetsuya doesn't know why but the adults continuously offer their help with running things or outright demand it, yet for some reason they seem incredulous at the DC's speed or tactics.

Surely this was just common sense, right? Take the main points and then expand. They couldn't just stay in the school forever – the Chairman is getting twitchy already and has resorted to just sleeping in his own home instead of the rooftop of Nami-chuu.

Which says a lot about how accommodating the teenager is being.

Tetsuya wonders when the Chairman will get bored of playing hero and just take off, carried by the wind.

"Thank you for your attention," Tetsuya says politely into the silence and turns to leave the stage. The group of three DC members at his back trail him out, the explosion of noise completely ignored.

As Tetsuya steps out into the sunlight, people scurrying around on odd jobs to keep the school running, he can't help but glance up to the roof.

A figure stands at the very edge, gazing out over Namimori with a jacket fluttering in the wind.


	4. this

"Hello, Namimori!" Takeshi cheers into the microphone, glad for the sounproof recording booth as the construction work outside is pinfully loud despite being almost nine in the evening.

He usually goes to school and then to help out at Takesushi but now he comes here for the job. A good point about taking the late segment is that kids normally slept at this time, so they didn't put a ban on language for him, unlike the five other talk hosts.

"So, it's two weeks in, and obviously the radio tower is back up thanks to our resident genius Irie Shoichi." Takeshi pauses then, staring down at the script he's supposed to read word for word.

They only chose him because he's well know among the middle schoolers to be cheerful. The DC girl who passed over the job summary said that people needed a genuinely happy voice to carry them through, not some rehearsed banter.

Rehersed banter? Well there's none of that, but Takeshi was told not to deviate by a very muscled middle schooler who already had a beard, the threat very clear.

He smiles. If they wanted a puppet, they picked the wrong guy.

"I'd like to ask –rhetorically, because the phone lines aren't working yet- has anyone seen our mysterious Hibari?" Takeshi smiles wider and joyfully waves at the frowning DC trying to open the locked door to the sound booth.

"I still haven't thanked him for helping me and my dad," Takeshi chuckles. "Imagine this; our fearless leader, all scowly and cute – did I say cute? I meant terrifying. So he's hopping around the rooftops during the outbreak, swooping down and picking off infected. Now, my dad and I were cornered in a pile up of cars and a group of about thirteen."

Takeshi pauses. "Yeah, that's right. Thirteen of them –a number you don't see these days because of the Patrollers- and while dad had his sword, my baseball bat (may it rest in peace) had been bitten in half."

Takeshi leans closer to the microphone. "So I'm facing six of those infected with no weapon, and I honestly see no way out with my back against an over turned car." A chuckle escapes him. "So what did I do? Well, I summoned a demon of course."

"Yes, you heard that right – I screamed for Hibari. And not three seconds later, he drops onto the zombies and they go down with that satisfying _crunch_." Takeshi leans back. "I timed him, actually: seven seconds, for the whole thirteen."

"And then he tells me I'm _late for school_ , before flying away." Takeshi leans his elbows on the bench, vaguely aware that the DC member had stopped trying to come in. He glances around in curiosity but they're nowhere Takeshi could see.

"I'm sure most of you have heard some rendition of the rescue by friends, or even faced Hibari's berating yourself." Takeshi tilts his head to the side, fiddling with the script a bit. "It's a bit odd, that story. Why would he always tell us that we're late for school?"

"It's good that I'm not a cat, because I got a bit curious. So I cornered a few people and weaselled some information out of them." Takeshi pauses for suspense.

"Did you know that Hibari tracked down every single one of Nami-chuu's students who were outside the school? Did you know that he deliberately pointed them at the school in his usual method of communication? Did you know that every one he saw turned to the school and just ran?"

"Did you know that every single one survived?" Takeshi sounds out slowly.

"I'm not saying that we students didn't have to fight for our lives out there, nor am I glossing over any loss of family and friends, but _God_ we are privileged to have Hibari care for us."

Takeshi drops his voice and leans into the microphone, his eyes far away. "I keep thinking: what if he didn't care? What if he just protected the ones smart enough to run for the school? Or even just stayed in his home and didn't bother at all with anyone?"

"I don't know your reasons, Hibari. Nor do I particularly care for them. I'm just grateful that my dad and I survived."

Takeshi flops back into the chair and grins with sharp teeth, declaring loudly and cheerfully, "Which is why, as soon as I find you, I'm going to give you a great big hug and millions of kisses!" he laughs.

"I wouldn't say no to giving head, either!"

The DC guy reappears with three others and a chainsaw, the metal roaring as it cut through the door and the chair Takeshi put under the handle before he even began recording.

"Well, gotta go now – the DC got through the door," Takeshi says as a goodbye, jumping out of the seat.

"Hey now, Hibari is still yours – I'll just get a Wednesday, how about that?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Takeshi, why do I always write you as sexually devious?
> 
> And yes, he is the zombie apocalypse version of Cecil from Welcome To Night Vale.


	5. happened

"As it turns out," Takeshi begins another week in. "Someone high up on the food chain finds me amusing. So here I am, back for round two. I'll do the news seriously this time, promise."

"Three weeks in, and the hospital is taking injured _only_ as the hotels have been cleaned out and are accepting. However, let's be honest, most of us Nami-natives have moved back into our homes. Radio station is up as well, though a few rooms need to be finished. The mall is still in lockdown phase, but DC intel says it'll be secure this week and larger supply runs out of Namimori will be brought back to the centre."

"The radio relays only extend a few towns over in any direction, but the signal is slowly being boosted further across Japan. Regarding the actual clearance of the town, Hibari and co. have set up the pressure fence and most of the buildings are cleared out. DC reports that the entire town will be a safe zone by tomorrow, but to be wary of the fence as it alerts any intrusion but doesn't stop."

Takeshi lets out an exaggerated breath of relief. "Well now that it's done, on to major news. I saw Hibari today," Takeshi sings the last part, a wide grin on his face. "And guess what? I did give him a hug!" Takeshi laughs happily.

"When I woke up in hospital a few hours later, I was so happy. I still remember the surprised look on his face –which was too adorable for words- and then I got the usual 'I'll bite you to death' which has a whole new meaning now that zombies are walking about," Takeshi chuckles.

"But before I got hit, I offered to give him head." Takeshi pauses. "He had no idea what I was talking about. This was around the time I got tackled by quite a few DC, and hit my head on the pavement which lead to blacking out and the hospital visit."

Takeshi grins wide. "I didn't think it was possible to be more respectful of the DC, but as it turns out, learning that they've kept Hibari innocent is blowing my mind. I've taken to bowing at every one of them I see. It's generating a lot of confusion, but I don't care."

"Anyway, back to my relationship with Hibari; I think we're really getting somewhere. I mean, at least he wasn't the one who knocked me out."

Takeshi nods determinedly. "We'll make beautiful babies together."

* * *

 

"Back again," Takeshi says a month in. "I got taken off again for hugging Hibari – the only reason I got to do the broadcast last time was because I snuck in while they still thought I was in hospital. Don't worry, this is legit now."

"So, news. What do we have?" Takeshi flips through the papers on the desk.

The top story is about the rich foreigners complaining. As soon as the signal boosted to over Japan and a few short-burst, short-range towers overseas, the private aeroplanes started coming in for landing. The powerful and the wealthy strutted in and started throwing money around.

They looked incredulous when they heard things in Namimori were free, and soon were relegated to houses furthest from Hibari because they kept bothering the Chairman about flying back to their mansions and having the teenager clear them out.

Alongside these people is a mash of army personal and equipment from pretty much every continent, who arrived because their previous station had been overrun by zombies. A lot of people, mostly researchers, arrived with them.

Another story is on the patrols, but the girl just before Takeshi's slot spoke about it at length, describing the usual patrol route and asking for more volunteers.

The next is about the actual radio network gaining a lot of other channels for different languages. Namimori is now a hub of different cultures and since the signal is also going overseas, the extra channels are necessary since not everyone knows Japanese.

The last is a fluff piece about someone saving a cat from a tree. Takeshi rolls his eyes.

"Never mind, news is boring. Instead, let's talk about Hibari," Takeshi says with a chipper voice. "I keep seeing him, just that trademark jacket of his, turning a corner or disappearing into a crowd. I did catch him once, at school in fact, but then a DC girl stepped in and shooed me away. Maybe they warned him about me being a bad influence or something," Takeshi muses.

Then he's flopping back into the chair with a sigh. "Oh well, it's already done. Hey, for those of you listening, did I actually get you to start bowing at the DC? I don't know if I'm only noticing it because I do it, or if people started to copy me…"

"Anyway, other Hibari news. The term 'chopper run' is starting to spread rather quickly. As you all know, zombies get attracted by sound, so the military helicopters have been flying around and leading wandering groups away from Namimori. That part is general knowledge, but most people don't know that Hibari gets dropped down onto the large hoard and does what Hibari does best."

Takeshi smirks. "After he bites them to death, he then fights his way up through a building –not because the chopper can't land on the street, but because he likes clearing buildings- and Hibari gets flown back to Namimori, usually with someone that was hiding in the building."

"When the pyro team is ready, trained firefighters coat the resulting bodies in an inflammable liquid and set it on fire. Yes, that's correct, inflammable means easily set on fire," Takeshi says teasingly.

He leans forward, completely serious now. "It's completely correct to say; these chopper runs are why patrols never get overrun with zombies, and contribute heavily to the Patroller body count being at an absolute zero."

Takeshi grins, voice light. "They also stop Hibari from getting bored."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't mind me, just world building over here.


	6. to

A hand is gently shaking him awake.

"Mukuro," a soft voice calls out. "Wake up, there's something… strange in front of us."

Lured by Chrome's promise of strange happenings, Mukuro opens his eyes and takes stock of his surroundings. Still with Chrome, Ken and Chisuka. Still lying across the backseat in the stolen car. Still in pain from the desperate sprint from infected. Still free from the Estraneo.

Still feeling the blood under his nails.

He smiles and sits up, running hands through his hair to comb it before adjusting the dark green uniform grabbed on the last stop.

"Good morning," he says simply, leaning forward between the front seats. "And what lovely surprise do we have-"

A thick blanket of corpses block the street, missing limbs and flesh torn off with abandon but all with crushed skulls. A few scattered bodies surround the car but grow in number so that by the end of the block, from one house's front door to the other, the corpses are high enough to reach Mukuro's hips.

The path of dead leads down two blocks and veers to the left, the rest hidden behind houses. The number of bodies varies, but nothing of street can be seen, covered in the black blood that the zombies generally ooze or even mashed up organs.

"-today," Mukuro finishes.

Sure, it occurs to him that people may have just been dumping the zombies here, but the sheer number is still incredible for only being a month and a week since the outbreak. Even Mukuro and his fellow teens hadn't killed this many and they cut through who knows how many towns since escaping Italy.

Even disregarding that, there are no bullet holes so far as Mukuro can see, just blunt force trauma. It even looks like whatever group did this was having fun – some zombies had been completely broken with bones splintered and flesh turned into pulp.

However, then he focuses on the positioning. These didn't look like they were simply unloaded from a truck or even carried by hand. The limbs were all entangled like the zombies had been clawing past their own to reach whatever was cutting them down.

It almost seems like the group who did this honestly fought off a horde of zombies this huge and won.

"Oya," Mukuro breathes out and can't help the delighted laugh. "What a welcome this is, Namimori. You even rolled out the red carpet."

And what a lovely blood red it is.

They back up the car, even though every single one of them wants to just drive over the zombies. It's a good decision, they all know, because their shitty little Nissan wouldn't stand a chance.

Ken makes a vow that he'll find a monster truck and see if he can make a paste. The other three whole heartedly agree.

They end up following the destruction. It goes two blocks down, one left, two more down and another three left until whichever group seemingly runs out of zombies to mash up.

Chrome applauds quietly when they reach the end.

The further they get into the middle of Namimori, the less zombies they find. Never live ones, which is a blessed change from the rest of Japan, but it's the corpses that lessen until they stop showing up at all.

It's disappointing that such a display of bloodlust isn't repeated. The fact that Mukuro actually thinks that makes him pause, remembering something about how people shouldn't admire death. He tries to remember, but it was only a snippet of conversation from his time hiding away in the last plane out of Italy.

It was during the outbreak that they escaped from the Estraneo famiglia, while the scientists were too busy screaming and being eaten. Mukuro, rather vengeful about them taking his eye and swapping it with an 'improved' version, locked the doors and set the entire building aflame.

Ken with his animal DNA, the proud clone Chisuka, and Chrome who doesn't even need organs, all watched with him.

Then they scrambled away and snuck onto a plane in the panic. Immediately after landing, they stole a car and blindly travelled wherever they wanted, just blissful at being free, and left mass graves in their wake.

Until a week ago that is, when the habitual channel surfing actually brought something more than static. They listened to the happy laughter in shock, and gaped at the J-pop song that blared from the car's radio. The song ends and they noted every word intently.

Namimori is always accepting more people.

Namimori has food and clothes.

Namimori is safe.

Mukuro stretches in the small car, letting out a relieved sigh when his muscles relax after. He glances through the windscreen when Ken makes an annoyed sound.

Up ahead is a large fence, just thin mesh perhaps three meters tall with cement blocks to keep it upright and stable.

A sign on the fence says that if touched with enough pressure, a signal is sent to the control tower. It asks that people go to the north side where the legitimate gate is, and even gives instructions on how to get there.

Mukuro shrugs when Chisuka looks at him, so the driver pulls away and follows the fence to the 'north side'.

The closer they get the more people they see until it seems like the entire town is waiting at the gate. The entrance is wide open as a procession of matte black vehicles drive through.

Military issued tanks are scattered in amongst the SUV's and four wheelers. Right in the middle is something like a decked out semi carting what looks to be a trailer full of injured but relieved humans who peek out of the built in windows. Probably survivors from outside of Namimori being brought in.

Scattered around and on the procession is teenagers and a few adults, most of whom carry red armbands. These people all hold weapons, clad in strong materials that make it hard for zombies to bite through.

Ken lets out a low whistle at the defences Namimori has but all four are thinking about how corrupt the leader could be, and escape plans if things turn bad.

The last car is a jeep, and stops at the gate instead of following inside. A teenager sits up on the car roof and yawns widely behind a politely raised hand, evidently having been taking a nap. He pulls out noise cancelling earphones and looks down over the side of the car where another red armband is gesturing him down.

The teen does nothing for a moment and the one on the ground tenses a bit. Then the boy rolls his eyes and drops to the floor, jacket fluttering behind him from the motion.

The jeep is waved on as the two retreat to the side of the gate and start talking. Mukuro winds down his window to hear better as Chisuka moves up to greet yet another red armband who starts explaining how to get to the administration building.

Mukuro pays no attention, far more focused on the silver eyed boy with the aura of danger.

"-at least tell me where you leave the bodies next time," the larger one pleads. "It would stop scaring the new recruits too badly if they aren't surprised to find your…"

"My what?" the smaller teen asks, with his voice like a knife.

"…Your boredom," the pompadour finishes hesitantly.

"I don't see how this is my fault," the dangerous one says, a dismissive exasperation. "The recruits are always so scared of everything. Is it bad to get rid of the vermin?"

"No, Hibari," the larger says slowly as if to coax a lion into not lunging for them. "It's not bad, and it's certainly not your fault. Just… perhaps next time don't spell out anything with the corpses."

Mukuro flashes back to the wonderful show of pure destruction and can finally assign it to the silver eyed boy in front of him. Only to him as well from the way the larger one is talking.

What a monster.

Mukuro smiles and as Chisuka sets the car into drive, he hears;

"First it's don't write my name, then a no to writing Namimori, and now I can't even use Nami-chuu song lyrics?" the boy says, a petulant tone mixing with the sweet poison of his unspoken insults.

_If they can't handle this, then what use are they?_

Mukuro throws his head back and laughs. He wonders if this feeling is love.


	7. you.

"Fon!" Skull cries happily, practically bouncing in his seat as he waves the martial artist over.

Colonnello can't help but smile as well. They've been in the safe zone for only a week but the atmosphere itself just relaxes, promising sanctuary. The sun is the right temperature of warm and all around is the sound of Namimori filled with life. It's been a month and a half since the outbreak yet people bounce back so quickly.

Lal snickers under her breath as Fon gets pulled into a free seat at the outdoor café table, a cup of tea already waiting for the man.

"Fon," Lal begins solemnly. "Really, thank you for getting the message to us."

The note came by pigeon, of all things, and immediately after they received it, Lal and Colonnello took off from Australia, meeting the purple stuntman in China before making the last trek to Japan.

Despite how troublesome guiding a full ship was with only the three out them, it was easier than trying with strangers. They know how to work together because of the whole 'Arcobaleno' phase where they were all commissioned by Luche to guard Aria. The title sticks since the seven of them meet up occasionally and still take jobs together.

"There's no need to thank me," Fon says humbly. "It was on a guess more than anything."

"A guess that your little doppelganger would build an Empire?" Colonnello spoke up with a grin. "Well in that case - to Hibari Kyouya; may he never tire of playing king."

The other two raise their glasses in toast with laughter but Fon just shakes his head fondly.

"Which reminds me," Skull adds after the three take big gulps of their smoothies. "You said the boy has a mission for us?"

"Not quite," Fon hums. "He was originally planning to take off by himself and start working his way back to Namimori from the other end of Japan. His DC took exception to this and bribed him by saying that I will leave instead."

"Wait, so the kid hates you?" Skull wonders.

"More like… I won't let him go on suicide runs by himself," Fon sounds out slowly, picking the correct words.

"Oh!" Colonnello cries, snapping his fingers in a light bulb moment. "On the last chopper run, a few skyscrapers went down. That was you two?"

Fon just sips his tea, not confirming nor denying the incident.

"And you're asking us to go with you," Lal says, stirring the dredges of her drink with the plastic straw. "I wouldn't mind, as long as we have proper supplies and don't have to scavenge for food."

Colonnello and Skull grimace at faint memories of abandoned shops with jump scare zombies.

"He has promised weekly care packages, an airplane, and all of the berserker army personnel," Fon reassures the three.

"Why just berserkers?" Lal muses sceptically. "They're too hard to control, not to mention they tend to die quickly."

"These people are trained with a Hibari touch," Fon says with a too wide smile. "They don't die." And on that rather disturbing note, Fon stands and gestures the rest of them up. "It's best to meet him today – he's in a good mood."

The other three acquiesce, slurping up the rest of their drinks and leaving with a nod of thanks to the waiter. Money is starting to be introduced again, but no one actually bothers.

They soon come to a huge traditionally structured house but before they even reach the front steps, a muscled teen with a red armband steps out, arms laden with a folder.

They nod to Fon in greeting. "The Chairman is currently…" the pompadour trails off, looking exasperated for a brief second before the professionally blank mask is back on. "He is in the backyard," the girls finishes with.

She then walks down the steps, her well defined biceps making Skull take a step back, and leads them around the house to a large metal fence painted black, the entire thing curving around the large property with no gaps to look through, just sleek metal.

She opens the gate by pressing her DC armband against a blank portion which lights up green for a split second and goes dark again. The hidden lock disengages with a hollow thunk and a carefully concealed door swings open automatically.

They all step through but the three people new to this house stop dead as the door swings shut behind them and locks audibly.

The portion of the backyard they're in spans the side of the house in a rectangle shape, cut off from the area directly behind the house by a clear wall. Behind the glass, a stunningly colourful garden can be seen with what seems to be millions of different plants arranged neatly at the edge of footpaths. A set of small wooden bridges lead down to the back end, zig-zagging over a twisting stream filled with fish and bright water plants.

Despite how incredibly beautiful that portion is, the three adults are more focused on the section they stand in. More specifically, on the twenty or so zombies standing perfectly still in a single straight row, their back to the people who just entered. The clothes are ripped and roughed up, like the usual on infected, most of it dark with dried blood.

In front of the zombie line-up is a large silver metal cage on wheels, with the top sealed over and the door wide open. Two more DC members stand at either side of the cage, completely at ease despite the crowd of infected not fifteen meters from them.

Hibari Kyouya sits at the top of the structure, his legs hanging over the side of the cage to the open doorway.

"Kyouya," Fon greets, his smile just a touch too amused. "These are the three I told you about."

Hibari Kyouya whistles. It swings up to a high pitch before dropping low and cutting off abruptly.

The infected whip round, dropping from their straight backed stance into the half slumped posture of normal zombies. Their heads jerks and teeth click together as they catch sight of the people by the door, but they don't move.

The DC girl who showed them to the backyard calmly starts walking to the Chairman, the file in her hands clearly meant for him.

The next command is a low whistle in three short bursts.

The infected launch themselves forward, sprinting for the girl who still strides towards her leader.

Colonnello snaps out of his shock, forcibly pushing the concept of training to the back of his mind, as he watches in morbid curiosity. Would the kid really kill one of his DC? A quick glance to Skull, Lal and Fon shows that they're not going to help the girl.

Colonnello turns back just in time to see the crowd of infected split around the DC member, rushing past like a waterfall, and charge the one standing closest to them. Fon does nothing but smile as the three behind him draw their guns in preparation.

The whistle this time is a sharp note, higher pitched and hovering in the air longer.

The charge cuts off, the infected jerking to a stop barely a meter from Fon.

Another command of two long notes, one in a higher register and the second at a lower one, makes the infected turn and start shuffling towards the cage.

The teenager drops from the roof, his jacket flaring out behind him at the motion before settling again. He takes the file from the girl and walks straight through the herd of infected to get to Fon. The zombies give him a very wide berth.

"I thought Tetsuya was joking," Fon admits. "Why exactly are you training them?"

The teen stops in front of the martial artist and starts flicking through the papers he was handed, ignoring the question.

The DC closes the cage door as the zombies inside stay perfectly still with vacant stares, before they start wheeling it off further down the backyard into what looks to be a small warehouse. The door to that opens and Colonnello gapes at more cages inside before the door is sealed again.

The DC leader closes the file and hands it over to Fon. "That is all the information you will need for your job, adjusted to cater for your herbivores being added."

"Thank you," Fon says politely as he accepts the folder. "But I would be a lot more assured if you told me you aren't training zombies just to cure your boredom."

"I am not," the teenager says with a sharp edge to his voice, his dislike at being questioned very blatant. "I am training them for battle."

"Actual battle?" Fon asks, partly hopeful but mostly sceptical. "Not just for a twisted version of chess?"

The reply of silence is very clear.


	8. My

Enma is out of his depth.

Sure he's a mafia boss, but frankly he only has a hold on his unruly friends and a vague past that no one bothers to remember. If you asked about the Simone family, the best you'll get is a mildly searching look, like the person answering was trying to remember something unimportant.

Before the outbreak they were struggling to gain respect as a legitimate family, but it was difficult since the Simone dropped out completely before the Primo even finished his reign, and Enma's biological family are completely content with small time protection.

Enma isn't sure why, since Simone is strong in their own right. Why bother taking contracts from more powerful families, only to be used as a scapegoat if things go badly?

Not that Enma wants to be a mafia boss, but it's better to be strong than weak.

Here in Namimori, in the mix of culture and lifestyle, Enma and his friends haven't even tried to push for a place in the underground. More precisely, because there isn't an underground in Namimori.

Calling it 'Namimori' is simply an easy way to label the safe zone currently spanning just over a third of Japan.

The borders are completely open since the fence is far too small to wrap the entirety but hardly any infected show up thanks to the regular patrols reaching in every direction. As a secondary measure, only full time Patrollers are allowed to live at the constantly expanding borders.

The occupants of Namimori seem less like victims of horrific circumstances and more like perfectly normal citizens. However, they do all have standard combat training, implemented by the DC for all newcomers, and the majority still seem reluctant to receive or use money at all.

The number of people in Namimori is just under overpopulation, which would have been stunning considering how many the virus wiped out and then how many were killed, but Enma has been in Namimori long enough to never question the DC's capabilities.

It should theoretically be easy to create an underground in this environment. There's a lot of people, the DC don't have access to criminal records from overseas, weapons are literally pushed onto them, and the majority of survivors are only alive because they have experience with the more dangerous sides of life.

However, one doesn't just break rules in Namimori.

The DC always know.

So after a week of arriving, Enma discussed it with the rest of his friends, and they settled down into the jobs they picked when registering at the administration building.

Most of them chose Patroller as their talent lies with fighting because of their upbringing, and after the standardised tests to make sure the Simone knew what they were doing, the teenagers were given an apartment at the edges.

It's been a month and three weeks since the outbreak, and Enma is kind of glad that it happened. It's a horrible thought to have but Enma hasn't lost any family or friends. In fact, it's brought them all closer; Enma's parents and little sister calling every day to say hello and simply talk.

Enma ducks his head and smiles, trailing after his loud friends to the training centre - one in every town under the Namimori banner. The Simone teens are currently ten minutes late to the centre but no matter what Enma bribes them with, they won't speed up.

Yeah, he's out of his depth with trying to control his friends, but he wouldn't have it any other way.

Julie lets out a wild laugh, slipping away from Adelheid's fists. Unfortunately, his dodge takes him straight into the path of a passing teen. He jolts and spins, immediately blurting out a shocked apology when he catches sight of the red armband.

The boy stumbles from the unexpected hit but quickly gets his balance back, turning to scan first Julie and then the rest of them. He's wrapped in a long coat that hugs his slim frame, with black slacks tucked into boots and of course the signature DC band that proclaims he's a member of Hibari Kyouya's personal army.

The outfit screams that the boy deals with zombies on a daily basis – definitely a Patroller. Or perhaps something more extreme.

"You are late," the teenager says, his sharp silver eyes having caught onto the lilac armbands that signify a Patroller.

The armbands are there so people can ask for help if an infected breaches the border, and the black stripes denote the skill level to help DC officers move them around in battle situations.

"We were just heading to the centre," Enma reassures the other. Something about the teen makes the red head want to keep him in sight at all times, like Enma needs to be prepared for an attack.

"The training centre has been moved," is the reply.

"Where to?" Koyo asks, a sceptical tone despite the other being a DC. "And why has it changed so suddenly?"

"Follow," the teen orders, turning to continue his walk.

The Simone teenagers glance at each other and then finally turn to Enma. The red head starts after the DC member, trusting that no one wanting them harm would wear the material, and no one bad would dare steal the red cloth.

"Excuse me," Adelheid begins in a tone just shy of polite, lengthening her stride to catch up to the male. "Why has the meeting site been rearranged?"

The teenager's eyes flicker to Adelheid's face. "I broke the first one."


	9. best

Silence reigns before the Simone fall back a few paces to gossip in a whisper.

The Discipline Committee is highly respected because they are the best at what they do, and because of that the public defer to a red armband automatically. They're an exclusive group, the very first protectors of Namimori, and yet it's a relatively small gathering of middle schoolers mixed with high schoolers. Because of this, everyone in the safe zone knows the names of every DC, especially since Hibari Kyouya doesn't give anyone a red armband anymore.

However, even though the TV station is starting up and the speed of communication around Namimori is fast, faces of the DC aren't well known apart from the main representative Kusakabe Tetsuya.

So, technically, Enma and his friends should know this teenager's name.

They hiss at each other, going through a mental list, but rumours of personality and features don't match with any of their guesses. Maybe if they saw a weapon they could pinpoint the identity.

They turn a corner, obediently following at the DC member's heels, and step into a boxing gym.

The interior is the entire two floors, while any boxing equipment seems to have been packed away and instead blue training mats are set out.

Along the edges of the room sit a huge number of guns and a mix of every weapon Enma could name and then some. Also along the wall, on the second level, is a catwalk that circles the room for any observer.

A large group of lilac armbands stand at one end, silent as they listen to a DC girl explaining the itinerary.

The male DC Enma is following strides to the middle of the room and stops.

The girl gestures for her listeners to turn and gives a respectful nod to the male. "To summarise; this your only opponent, you have three hours to take him down, use whatever you can to do so."

The recruits fan out, snatching up weapons and circling the teenager. Some look more wary than others, but the ones who are cautious also seem to have given up already.

"Fatal attacks are allowed as you can't afford to hold back," the girl continues, striding to the stairs and making her way up to a catwalk. "But any injury to your fellow recruits will have you stripped of your armband."

The Simone take up position against a wall and simply observe for the moment. They already know what they're supposed to be doing so this is just to get a feel for the opponent.

The teenager turns in a slow circle, scanning the group he's up against. All of the armbands hold two or more stripes out of the maximum five, since this side of Namimori faces the larger cities with more infected.

Then a gleam of silver reflects off the florescent lights, weapons suddenly appearing in the teen's hands.

Tonfa.

_Mother fucking tonfa._

"Hibari Kyouya," Enma breathes out, finally placing a name to the DC member.

The recruits who looked so confident before suddenly drop back, but the Chairman follows in a blur.

* * *

The Disciplinary Committee member strides across the catwalk as the last recruit collapses, already unconscious.

Her Chairman lets the metal staff drop from his hands, panting hard. He moves around the room, snatching up fallen tonfa and getting his breathing under control.

The DC girl catalogues his expression and puts it through a mental translator. The Chairman seems to be rather content with the recruit's abilities, but the set of his mouth says he would have preferred it if they actually managed to knock him out.

"Chairman," the girl greets as she climbs down the stairs from the catwalk. "Thank you for doing this. The recruits tend to get arrogant when they have more stripes."

"No matter," Kyouya hums. "It was my pleasure." A flick of his wrists clean the blood from his weapons, followed by the spikes retracting, and finally the tonfa being tucked away.

She smiles at his response and watches closely, taking out her roll call to note down comments as he weaves through the bodies, making a slow circuit of the room.

"Down a stripe," he orders. "Up one, down two, down, down, up, take this one's band away, up, up two, down," he dictates as he passes over the unconscious victims.

Most of them have been promoted properly by the DC, but some sneak past the grading. She's happy to note that the ones she graded have correct stripes.

Kyouya stops at the group that followed her Chairman inside - the ones late to her training session. He scans the bodies and she remembers how well they fought.

They lasted two hours and forty-three minutes -the last ones standing in fact- dealing a great amount of damage. The long haired girl even put a dent in one of her Chairman's tonfa while the red head cut one of his chains, the entire group working together to wrench Kyouya's weapons out of his hands.

They fought well together, moving in ways that dealt to their strengths. If the Chairman was only restricted to mastery of his tonfa, they would have won.

Unfortunately for them, her Chairman is Hibari Kyouya.

"Five stripes," Kyouya says simply.

She blinks in shock. "They'll be the first," she sounds out, not exactly questioning the Chairman but asking if he's certain. She saw how strong they are, but the current order has no five stripes – partly to make people work for it but mostly because no one is strong enough. "Only six percent of your forces reach four, with thirteen percent at three."

Kyouya hums. "Perhaps I'm too strict."

"Of course not," she snaps, angry at someone questioning her Chairman, even if it's the Chairman himself. "They're the ones letting you down. They should all be five stripes by now."

Kyouya gives her a look to shut her up, but he's too amused for it contain much of an edge.

She feels like a pet that did something wrong but is too adorable to scold properly. Admittedly, she heard the last time a DC snapped at him and tried to order the Chairman around, that smiling radio host had just propositioned Kyouya.

The host isn't dead, only because the public find him amusing. That wouldn't normally bother the DC, but apparently hangings aren't a thing anymore - especially when the dead man walking has public opinion on his side.

Pity.

"Sorry, Chairman," she says. "But only for yelling at you. I'm not retracting my opinion."

"I wouldn't expect you to," he murmurs, staring at her until she twitches before turning back to the unconscious teens. "They're five stripes, but only when they're a team…"

"Shall I send them to Kusakabe?" she offers. "He's been asking for strong recruits who work well with a team."

A sigh escapes her Chairman. "Fine - but if I see them stalking me on his orders, I'll bite them to death."

She smiles as she writes down the note.


	10. wasn't

Bovino Lambo kicks at the ground in annoyance and clutches his gun tighter. The wind is blowing through the abandoned city fiercely, so he's thankful for the thick, heavy duty material of the patrol uniform. Although he could do without the helmet despite how tricked out it is by Verde himself.

That was a shock, the mafia scientist strolling up to Namimori with an army of self-driving trucks behind him and offering his services for a safe place. The DC ushered him in, and alongside Irie Shoichi and Spanner, new inventions started getting cranked out at an astonishing speed.

A crunch is heard and Lambo tenses, spinning on his heel and peering down the quiet roads for any sign of a zombie. Nothing emerges and he mentally spits out every curse he knows in every language he knows.

It might not be his first patrol, but it's the first time he's by himself outside of Namimori since the outbreak. On the desperate run from Italy, Lambo had Fuuta, I-pin and her teacher Fon with him.

He'd heard about Fon of course, who in the mafia didn't? So when the man suggested Namimori, Lambo was all for it. They arrived a month into the zombie infestation, and they've been here for another month, all of them moving into a cozy little house near Hibari Kyouya's.

It was rather stunning when Lambo met the teenager for the first time. The boy is two years younger than Lambo and yet he controls almost half of Japan.

That's forgetting everything he does to assure there's even a safe zone in the first place; the organisation and the defences then all of the tactics to expand and gather more survivors. The statistics for a patrol run is insane as well – the body count is at a firm zero and the civilian truck is always full when they head back into the safe zone.

The speed the DC work at is incredible as well. Already Namimori is just a normal town again, the kids going to school with a little more emphasis on survival. Before Lambo left for this patrol, Fuuta said he was hearing whispers of a festival.

Lambo was actually looking forward to it, but now he's probably going to be lucky if he survives the next day.

A blur darts around his periphery and he spins, holding up the gun in preparation, but yet again there's no opponent waiting for him.

Lambo is lost, there's no other way to explain it, but he really hopes he's not hallucinating because that would be the icing on the cake of his horrible day.

To be fair, it started off well. He slept in because his school day was replaced by the patrol, before getting up to the smell of bacon curtesy of Fuuta, the God, and then he walked with a bounce in his step down to the patrol building where he signed in.

From there he found his locker and changed into the uniform, checking quickly that the helmet was charged, before collecting a standard issue gun from the armoury and stepping out with the rest to take his place in the convoy.

This time he was designated to a car seat in a sleek black SUV with seven others. Usually he would walk or sit on one of the vehicles because as he was new-ish to the whole patrol scene, he would take the buildings closest to the safe zone. That way, if anything went wrong, help was only a few minutes away.

The convoy kept a steady pace as groups detached to pour into buildings and clean them out. Usually some people were waiting on the roadside for them and would be ushered into the civilian truck, but most came out when the building was cleared of lingering infected.

Every couple of blocks a car would roll to a stop, as a quick getaway for the people inside the buildings as well as a trail of bread crumbs back to the safe zone.

The convoy had spread out, definitely kilometres away from the safe zone edge, by the time Lambo's car deviated from the routine. A group of infected was spotted to the far left by one of the guys up top with binoculars. Normally they would leave it to one of the tanks, but the group was chasing a family and the tanks can't exactly move fast.

So they took off, winding through the streets before catching up and ramming straight into a few, taking care of the rest with gun barrels pointing out of lowered windows.

The Patrollers spilled out of the car and waved the family inside which took up three seats – two when the distressed little girl hopped onto her father's lap. It was around this point that Lambo wandered over into an alleyway because of a noise to find a bisected zombie crawling towards him.

The recruits squished in with a Patroller sprawled over two others, all distracted with comforting the sobbing girl and trying to get the other father to stop crying as well. The driver glanced around for any other survivors, and then took off when he didn't see any.

Lambo put a bullet into the zombies head, then trooped back out and froze. He scanned unfamiliar buildings and streets that were completely empty, before whispering; "Tolerate."

And we're back to the start, where Lambo struggles to remember the way back, always looking for the check point cars left behind as he wanders the zombie infested city-scape. It's been about an hour according to the helmet, and as soon as Lambo gets back he's going to suggest adding a GPS.

A soft thud sounds, right behind him, and Lambo jerks around as he raises the gun.


	11. good

The teenager rises from his low crouch as if he just landed, figure unfolding into the signature black trench coat lined in white with a red arm band. Lambo gulps around what feels like his heart as he stares down the barrel of his rifle into sharp grey eyes and a blank expression.

"What did you jump off?" Lambo blurts out as he lowers the gun, unable to stop thinking about it. There weren't any vehicles around, only buildings at least thirty storeys high.

"You are one of Fon's herbivores," Kyouya says, completely ignoring the question. "You are very far from safety."

Lambo nods sheepishly, trying hard to not hear the words as a threat. "There was a group of infected chasing a family and then the car drove off without me."

Kyouya stares at Lambo as if he's looking straight into the Bovino's soul, which should be impossible because the helmets are all tinted black and bullet proof, therefore it should automatically be Hibari Kyouya proof, right?

_Right?_

The younger teen turns away and starts walking down the street Lambo came from. The Patroller follows, unsure but hoping that the other was leading him out of the city's maze.

The Chairman seems to pick a building at random, before striding up to the glass doors of the company's reception. Tonfas slip into his hands and spikes snap out. One solid hit is all it takes to shatter the doors.

Lambo flinches back from the broken glass and then again from the four or so zombies inside. He raises his gun but in a black bur they drop to the floor with caved in skulls.

Kyouya continues across the lobby until he reaches the elevators, and then pushes the up button. The lights above the four doors are on and indicate an elevator is moving downwards.

"You aren't supposed to use them," Lambo says, an instinctive reaction from years of seeing apocalypse movies. He's actually more caught up on the fact that electricity is working in here. Must be a generator, maybe even solar panels. It works like that, right?

Kyouya raises an eyebrow in question.

Lambo flushes red and shakes his head. "Never mind." He turns, grateful when a trio of infected burst through the stairwell door as a distraction. He puts them down with precise aim, the pride of a Mafioso allowing him no mistakes.

Then the elevator dings open.

Now, to get the full picture: Lambo and Kyouya are standing not three steps away from the opening doors, right in the middle in fact because there's no one getting off that they had to keep to the side for. The elevators themselves are industrial sized, a good eight by ten meter monstrosity to keep up with the flow of traffic back before the outbreak.

Now, with that in mind, Lambo almost pisses himself when the doors open and the lift is crammed so full of zombies they're literally stacked on top of one another. This mountain of infected proceeds to fall on top of the two.

Lambo shrieks, just a little, and leaps back, opening fire. Kyouya waits patiently with his tonfas at his sides for Lambo's clip to run out before surging forward and wrecking the ones still moving. He then kicks away the one blocking the doors and stares down Lambo until the cowed teenager steps into the lift as well.

The faint elevator music is immensely inappropriate for the situation.

Lambo tries not to look down at the pile of zombies they're standing on and instead stares at the bloodied mirrors that count as walls. He tilts his head at the trail of blood, like a hand scraped down the mirror, and morbidly wonders if the person was alive when they did that.

He shudders and instead focuses on his reflection. A soldier stands there, decked out head to toe in black with heavy duty boots. The uniform carries only two pockets for miscellaneous items while the belt is weighed down with extra clips and an extendable baton.

The rifle is held with both hands diagonally along his torso, which has extra protection from the built in bullet proof vest. However, the most intimidating feature by far is the matte black helmet, almost like a motorcycle one except thinned out. His name reads across the front of the visor while on the inside it reads out time, and a little square off to the side acts as a zoomed in picture.

The uniform is built especially for patrols, just a few hours outside of the safe zone to storm buildings and take out mindless corpses who don't do anything but rush forward and bite. It's lightweight for running but strong to keep back teeth.

Hibari Kyouya, on the other hand, wears boots hidden under black pants of the same material that Lambo's is. His shirt is just a plain button up that he tucks in, while black gloves cover his hands.

The weapons of choice are silver tonfas with a black grip, where the end seems to be capped off with black as well - lines running down the almost cone shaped cap so it can split and turn into a grapple hook for the chain hidden inside.

His coat has a high collar stopping just above the teens chin, and extends to just above the knee with white accent lining the edges. There are slits cut into the sides for extra range of movement. The coat is only buttoned it up until his belt, the sides billowing around him when he walks. And of course there's the red armband noting him as DC.

Over all, Lambo is a mix of terrified out of his mind and in complete awe. His eyes flicker up to meet Kyouya's and Lambo freezes.

"What?" Kyouya asks in boredom.

Lambo hears the voice like honey, and struggles once again to not take it as a threat. He blurts out the first thing in his head. "Why did you get the coat made?" He mentally face palms.

Kyouya turns away to face the doors. "I used to have a jacket but it got lost."

"How?"

"I jumped out of a helicopter into a mass grave," Kyouya explains. "Well, technically they only stopped moving after I was done."

If Lambo wasn't terrified before, he is now. The floor counter on the wall suddenly stops at fifty-nine instead of eighty and the doors open with a quiet ding.


	12. enough.

The hallway is packed with corpses, at least thirty from what Lambo can see, one with no legs repeatedly smashing its face into the button that calls a lift.

For the smallest of seconds, Lambo freezes. The biggest group he'd seen since the outbreak was approximately sixty, and even then he was safely in a building when Fon took them down on the street.

The infected snap to attention when the doors open and gush into the elevator, gurgling out screams through half rotten or torn out throats.

Lambo lurches back to the corner and opens fire but more just keep flooding in until they get their teeth around his gun and wrench it away. He spits out a curse and lashes out with the baton, already knowing that there's too many.

"Hurry up," Kyouya calls out from somewhere outside the lift.

Wait, what?

Lambo cracks open the skulls of the four crowding him and gapes when he sees the crowd has magically disappeared. Well, more like collapsed with mashed up faces.

A short, one-toned whistle calls him and he trips over the carpet of bodies in his rush to get into the hallway. Kyouya stands down one end and when he sees Lambo, turns the corner.

"Wa-wait!" Lambo cries and runs after the younger one. He slips into a walk when he catches up, panting from the infected he took down.

"Do you have another weapon?" Kyouya demands and rolls his eyes when Lambo holds up the baton.

Lambo is jerked to a stop when Kyouya pauses and reaches for a thigh holster normally hidden by the long coat. The Chairman undoes the buckles and crouches back on his heels to wrap it around Lambo's thigh.

The Bovino can only hold still as Kyouya then does the same to another one of his thigh holsters. The teenager rises when he's done and continues down the hallway.

Lambo blinks after him and then hurries to catch up, stuffing the baton into his belt. As they enter the stair well and start climbing, Lambo turns to the weapons he was just given. He grabs one by the handle and slides it out of the sheath, revealing a blade the length of his forearm with strange circular patterns.

He finds a locking mechanism near the handle and pushes it down before sliding it along a short path and letting it pop back out again. As soon as he releases it, the entire blade buzzes to life, lighting up a harsh green as electricity crackles visibly from one circle to the next.

"Holy fuck you got me a lightsabre!" Lambo blurts out, stopping dead in his tracks as he stares wide eyed at the weapon.

Then the door of the landing above slams open with two zombies careening down the stairs to meet Kyouya. The same Kyouya, who calmly hops onto the railing and leaps up to catch the next set of stairs, vaulting over the railing there and peering back down at Lambo in curiosity.

The Bovino sucks in a breath and rips the second sword from it sheath before swinging for the first zombie. The blade sings with the motion and slices clean through the zombie's head, cutting a perfectly smooth path through both eyeballs and shaving off the top half of the skull. The short sword leaves trails of burnt flesh where it touched, zig-zagging out into small but unmistakable lightning strikes.

The next zombie meets a similar fate as his other sword goes straight into the forehead and slices up through the top of the head without any trouble as lighting sears across the cut.

It's only when the two bodies hit the ground that Lambo notices he's laughing. He make an effort to reel back his glee, but can't make himself stop smiling at how insanely powerful these weapons are. He looks up to find Kyouya's eyes on him.

"Thanks for the-"

Another door five floors up slams open and infected stream through, rushing down in numbers big enough that Lambo's brain kicks in. He makes for the door the first two infected came through, but suddenly Kyouya is in front of him, back pressing against the door to keep it closed.

"Get out of the way," Lambo snaps, trying to shove past him.

"Look at me," Kyouya orders in an even tone despite the stampede of zombies coming for them.

"We don't have time-"

"Herbivore," Kyouya snaps, jerking Lambo to a halt.

The Bovino automatically turns to face the DC leader.

"You're doing just fine," Kyouya says, completely ignoring the thunder of steps and sound of bodies slamming into walls as they rush down. "Take a deep breath and then turn around."

Lambo stares into silver eyes, and can't help but think that Kyouya is insane. Then again, Lambo must be too because despite hearing those things far too close to him, he takes a deep breath and lets it out.

Then he turns around and his first strike splits an infected into perfect halves, straight down the middle.

* * *

Lambo finds himself sprinting through a hallway that circuits the outer rim of the building, with just under two dozen behind him. He whips around a corner to find Kyouya running towards him, coat flaring out behind the Chairman as another dozen give chase. Lambo clearly has more zombies.

"I win," Lambo sings smugly as they pass each other, then digs into the ones chasing Kyouya as the teen does the same behind him.

"One to five, well done," Kyouya mocks. "Don't worry, we have another six levels for you to catch up."

Lambo scoffs, pulling his sword out from the last one to see Kyouya is already walking away. "You only won the last floor because mine fell out of a window when they couldn't turn properly," Lambo proclaims as he jogs to catch up.

"Is that my problem?" Kyouya says dismissively, darting into the stairwell and slipping out of the next level's door.

Lambo pops out, barely half a second after Kyouya, but the other teen is already turning the corner. Lambo grins and hurries to the main floor to grab as many zombies as he can.

 


	13. I'll

Ever since the outbreak, Ryohei has been learning to observe - learning to be quiet and watch his surroundings.

Because when he brushed off his father's worry and went on his morning run, he returned too late to save his parents, while Kyoko only survived due to Hibari Kyouya's timely intervention. For that, Ryohei will always be grateful to the DC Chairman.

So he watches his sister: from that blank, hopeless expression to tentative smiles and finally  _(finally)_  that beautiful laugh. Hana and Haru have helped a lot with keeping his sister happy. The two Sasagawa's moving into the neighbouring house to Hana and her parents, while Haru drops by constantly to drag the other two girls around the newly constructed town.

Ryohei can't say he's ecstatic that the three have taken to the DC provided defence lessons -because what if they decide to join the patrols outside where the zombies are?- but he's still happy they're learning to protect themselves.

The jobs they picked help to keep their minds off the infected as well. By the time the fence was put up around a clean Namimori, everyone able had a job they picked from a list. Kyoko secured a job at the food court in the mall because she feels calmed by cooking, while Hana took up a position in the DC administration office, and Haru worked with retail.

Ryohei, despite taking a job in the food court with Kyoko, was kicked out on the same day for being too extreme. He pouted for a while, meandering around the town and wondering he should join the construction crew and just get training before he starts, when a teen from the boxing club saw him. She recommended her job, which was teaching the self-defence lessons the DC run.

Until yesterday, that was his job. Today however, he has the day off to think over the request.

Since Kyoko told him about the rescue that first day, Ryohei watches Kyouya too, making sure he looked healthy and got enough sleep. It was definitely necessary in the beginning, as the middle schooler would work himself to exhaustion and end up slinking past the school gates at midnight, clutching his stomach or limping, and always covered in gore from taking out the infected before they could even get near the middle school.

The Chairman has gotten used to his new opponents since then and rarely, if ever, comes back with injuries.

However, during those first few days, Ryohei would talk to the only person who could care for Kyouya and not get thrown off the highest building in Namimori. He goes to Kusakabe Tetsuya. In fact, Ryohei and Tetsuya have built a friendship from gossiping about the Chairman.

Hibari Kyouya would do his best to not get caught with an injury or skipping meals, but Ryohei has the upper hand because he's not DC so Kyouya wouldn't be looking for the boxer. Ryohei then gives the information to Tetsuya who corners the Chairman and looks disappointed even as he bribes the teen into eating or getting medical help or even taking a nap.

It's because of Ryohei watching the Chairman that he received the request to take up a new job. Tetsuya outlined the DC's concerns that the further they get towards large cities, the more infected Kyouya has to deal with.

They call it 'chopper runs'. About three days before a convoy is sent out, one of the two military choppers available is sent out to circle the area about to be cleared. It moves slowly over the buildings, flying low to generate enough sound that will call any freely wandering infected.

The helicopter will have a large horde of dazed, shuffling dead wandering below it by the time it rises up and speeds towards the safe zone. Zombies don't tend to follow because of the speed, but mostly because they spot Kyouya waiting for them.

The usual drop off points for the Chairman feature roads with a few abandoned cars for him to climb and get away from the crushing mosh pit for a breather before diving back in. The road is also generally a one way street to offer a bottle neck and keep back most of the horde so he isn't overwhelmed.

Chopper runs are incredibly dangerous, as Kyouya always insists on them no matter how large the horde gathered is. It's a constant source of frustration for Tetsuya because the Chairman also insists that he doesn't need back up, and will stop talking entirely for a week if he spots anyone waiting for him.

It's been two months and a week since the outbreak, but only now the Chairman is accepting people tailing him. Rumours have it, a Patroller got lost and when the Chairman went to find them, they somehow convinced Kyouya that having company wouldn't be too bad. That's what Ryohei's job will be if he accepts Tetsuya's offer.

Ryohei opens his eyes to the bright blue sky and puffy, lazily drifting clouds. He sits up, bringing his legs off the edge and crossing them as he goes, before planting elbows on knees. The boxer peers over the edge of the cliff face in Namimori forest and muses about the pros and cons.

If he did take the job, he could keep an eye on Kyouya and make sure he comes back safe instead of just keeping the radio on during classes to hear any news.

Ryohei wants to be a Patroller as well, rather taken with the idea of being a protector; of wearing those fancy helmets and joining the procession of vehicles to clean buildings and help the survivors who can't make it to Namimori without help.

Besides, he's been staying inside the safe zone to keep an eye on Kyoko, to make sure she never goes catatonic again, but she doesn't need him now that she's smiling.

Ryohei leans back, bracing his weight on his hands, and looks out over Namimori forest.

Tetsuya said that the offer will always be available and that Ryohei could take as long as he wanted to respond. The boxer doesn't want to take too long, but it's good because he does need to speak with Kyoko about it.

He frowns and tries to remember. According to the schedule, the convoy is every week, but chopper runs are every fortnight. Ryohei promises to himself that he'll have an answer by the next chopper run.

The sky is a dark blue by the time he reaches home, waving to Hana's father through the window as he passes the house and unlocks the one next to it.

"Welcome home," Kyoko calls from somewhere upstairs, while Haru is sleeping on the couch with a mound of half-finished clothes burying her.

Ryohei beams and bounds up the stairs, dragging his little sister off the bed and swinging her around in glee, uncaring of the book that she drops.

It's the first time she's called this place home.


	14. try

"And you must be Gokudera Hayato," Tetsuya says, looking at the last person to show up at the border of Namimori.

Hayato nods, the helmet hiding his grimace. He's barely on time since Bianchi and her shitty face had him out of commission until the woman left.

There are four other Patrollers clustered loosely around a parked army jeep, and like Hayato, all of their uniforms are adjusted. Which means that on top of the four stripes each of them have, a DC has acknowledged their talent with the weapons they use.

The first one he can recognise as the radio host since the guy was chuckling merrily as Hayato walked up. The guy has a hand gun at his hip along with several magazines in a belt thinner than the standard. It's obvious his main weapon is the sword strapped across his back.

Frankly, the Italian has no idea how the guy is still alive. The public might love him but the DC is good enough to 'accident' the teenager.

From the helmet-muffled shouts, Hayato can place the second as the loud boxing enthusiast that's always yelling about extreme things and doing laps. Because his voice is muffled, he clearly doesn't have the helmet's speakers on and for that, Hayato is grateful.

The boxer carries no gun and no visible weapon but the material of his uniform looks thicker, with plates of matte black hugging his forearms. The gloves he wears are also plated and thicker.

The third also has no belt, and the helmet is missing as well. The smirk on the guy's face is disturbing and the purple hair with a tuft even more so. He wears the regular boots, pants and gloves but his shirt is halfway between camouflage and psychedelic clouds. He also has a high collar jacket made of the standard uniform material, and holds a ridiculously long trident that tapers to three wickedly sharp points.

The last one, Hayato isn't sure about. He has the helmet and the standard uniform, but the chosen weapons are what look to be short swords. They're in the two thigh holsters so Hayato can't see more than the handle, but from the sliding mechanism, they aren't normal.

Hayato himself has a mildly thicker material with the basic belt, helmet and gun strapped across his back, but numerous pockets litter the uniform, to carry his dynamite.

"Alright," Tetsuya begins. "I've discussed everything with you beforehand, but just to be clear I'll have to summarise."

Hayato can see the others immediately start to lose focus and rolls his eyes.

"There are radios in the standard uniform pocket. If anything goes wrong or you want to step out at any time, immediately use them," Tetsuya dictates. "No, I was not lying about the numbers you'll see out there. Yes, you're the first to go on a chopper run, apart from the Chairman. No, I was not exaggerating your chances of death."

The five huff almost simultaneously. That last point had been stressed a lot.

"Yes, I knew what I was doing when I picked you, you were researched extensively. No, this does not technically make you five stripes, but you do have bragging rights. Yes, if any of you touch my Chairman in an inappropriate way, the DC will burn you alive with any corrosive substance on hand."

Hayato does a double take and then stares at the purple one and the radio host who both seem to be chuckling darkly.

"Any questions?" the DC member finishes with a completely stoic face.

"I have a lot," the one with swords comments. "But it's mostly focused on that last point."

"Well," the radio host begins cheerfully. "It first started-"

"I can very easily take you off the chopper run," Tetsuya cuts in. "Since that answer isn't necessary, we'll be skipping it. Any others?"

They shake their heads.

"Wonderful," Tetsuya deadpans and then seems to catch sight of something over the Patroller's shoulders. "Chairman, these are the recruits I told you about."

Hayato spins with the rest to get his first look of the Namimori ruler. His eyes widen behind the safety of tinted glass as his teenage mind kicks in and fully admits the radio host might be on to something.

Hayato isn't even gay.

Maybe bi, though, because holy shit Hibari Kyouya is all the right kinds of dangerous. That look in the Chairman's eyes makes Hayato want to run in the opposite direction but also plant his feet and take the charge head on.

Kyouya passes the recruits without a glance and gracefully vaults onto the roof of the jeep. He sits there cross-legged, and looks back down at them with an impatient stare.

Hayato abruptly snaps out of it when he catches the glare from Tetsuya.

"Chairman," Tetsuya begins. "This is Yamamoto Takeshi, Sasagawa Ryohei, Rokudo Mukuro, Bovino Lambo, and Gokudera Hayato."

Kyouya's eyes flicker from one to the next as the DC points them out. "Good morning," he greets politely. "Now get in."

Hayato takes the driver seat as the boxer slips into shotgun, and Takeshi gets squished by Lambo and Mukuro in the back seat. He's hesitant to take off, considering the passenger on the roof, but a sharp whistle makes him jolt and start up the car.

Tetsuya waves in the rear-view mirror.

* * *

The first sign of trouble begins two thirds into their drive. The jeep is fully encased in the city, weaving through skyscrapers to reach the appointed stop. The windows are all down and air whooshes past audibly as Hayato definitely breaks the speed limit despite the Chairman up top.

On the road ahead is a group of infected, nothing large, and no need to get out of the car. However…

Ryohei knocks on the roof with two loud raps. "Come down," the boxer calls. "We're going to drive over them."

Hayato, already slowing down because hitting something going one-twenty is stupid, wonders if he should stop the car so Kyouya could get in.

There's a pause and then the teen swings through the passenger's side feet first. Kyouya twists gracefully so somehow he ends up on perched on Ryohei's lap without a moment of flail.

The three stooges in the back seat applaud and Hayato rolls his eyes.

"Hold him," Hayato orders and breaks just a little more for the perfect speed.

Ryohei wraps his arms around Kyouya's waist and across his chest like an actual seat belt would sit.

The Italian rams into the zombies, hard enough to do serious brain damage when the two he hit double over and splatter across the hood, but not hard enough to hurt his passengers. He jerks the wheel around in a tight u-turn before going back for more.

The occupants of the car are silent, getting jostled around by the manically smiling driver. The vehicle comes to a sudden halt facing the direction they need to go with the scattered zombies flattened behind them.

"I think that one twitched-" Mukuro murmurs.

Hayato slams into reverse and then forward again. The occupants of the car jerk back and forth from the sharp movements.

"Yep, you got it," Lambo deadpans.

Surprisingly enough, Kyouya doesn't climb back onto the roof for the rest of the drive. Instead, he opens the glove compartment for the sniper rifle, and stays on Ryohei's lap as he picks off infected through the windows of buildings.

Eventually Mukuro pipes up with a challenge, listing a floor and then a window with a zombie inside. Kyouya almost immediately finds the infected and takes it out with a perfect shot straight through the left eye.

Then Takeshi starts using the zoomed portion of his helmet, because he doesn't have super powered vision, and joins in with requests. That gets Lambo to start and Ryohei keeps a tally.

Kyouya runs out of bullets before they arrive and everyone whines like three year olds.


	15. harder.

Hayato parks the car about a block away because he doesn't want it to get damaged. They all pile out and walk to the set up.

He looks around and admits that it isn't bad. It's a one way road so it's pretty small to keep most of the zombie flow at a trickle. There's a semi pressed up against the side of a building and a smattering of cars along the entire block.

Hayato takes up position on the semi because his talent lies in long distance. Kyouya waits at the very edge of the battle grounds as a first line, with Ryohei and Takeshi next while Mukuro and Lambo hang back.

As it gets closer to the time, there's a nervous anticipation in the air from the recruits. It only grows as the sound of a chopper fills the air. The pilot hovers over them for a bit and then takes off at a faster pace.

Hayato first sees one turn the corner, then three, then ten, then seventy, and they keep coming.

He finds himself breathing in short gasps as the infected pour around the building and charge. He knows, intellectually, that Kyouya has taken insane amounts and that Hayato can stand on his own too, but the hoard feels like thousands.

He's never seen this many. He was already in Namimori when the outbreak hit, and while he is a Patroller, the most they get is fifty spread out along the kilometres they drive. He can see the others tense or take steps back, so at least he's not the only one.

He has a death grip on his dynamite and is honestly wondering if it's too late to back out, when the first wave hits Kyouya.

And then gets decimated.

The Chairman moves constantly, with one strike flowing into the next, and hits hard. His attacks are calculated for maximum damage with minimal effort. Kyouya whirls from one end of the street to the other, completely blocking the gap. It might only be one small lane but the Chairman is still keeping back an entire army.

Hayato blinks in shock when the DC leader actually throws a split second glance over his shoulder as if to check on the recruits.

"Let them through, Skylark!" Mukuro calls out with a vicious grin, twirling his trident because he's a dramatic bastard.

Hayato grits his teeth. "Move it already!" he calls out.

The cry is followed by Takeshi's laughter and Ryohei's patented shout. No one hears Lambo's muttered 'tolerate' but they see his swords rise and arc with lightning.

Kyouya is facing away from them but they see his shoulder's shake in laughter even as he deliberately focuses on one part of the crowd and lets the rest through.

Hayato growls low and lights up fire bracelets with a snap of his wrists. The Chairman is laughing at them because they had an entirely logical response to facing possible death.

He flings the first stick close to Kyouya but far enough that the teen is just out of the blast range. The bomb incinerates the infected closest and disables the others badly. Hayato gets a raised eyebrow for all his troubles.

After that, Hayato has to focus more on the infected near him than the Chairman. It turns into a blur, with one minute leaking into the next.

He doesn't notice the infected sneaking up on him until a flash of silver rushes past his head. He whips around to follow the trajectory and finds it buried handle deep in a zombie's eye. He wrenches it out and tosses it back.

Kyouya doesn't even look over to catch it.

Hayato tosses another dynamite in the Chairman's direction.

* * *

Ryohei is doubled over with hands on his knees, breathing heavily like the rest of them. Takeshi is sitting cross-legged on a car's hood and leaning back on his hands. Hayato is splayed out on another car's hood with Lambo on the roof.

It takes a moment but of course the peace is broken. Mukuro emerges from a pile of dead and stumbles over the mound of tricky terrain to reach the others.

"Hey, look who I found," he chuckles with a kufufufu. On one of his trident spikes is a decapitated head.

"My name is bob," Mukuro says with a low voice as he jolts the trident up and down so the head flops back and forth in a poor mimicry of talking.

"That's just sick," Hayato snaps.

Mukuro turns to him and raises and eyebrow. "Says the one cuddling up to a torso."

Hayato lifts his head and peers back at thing he's resting his head on. It actually is a torso, with the head, arms and legs cut off.

There are no lighting marks so it must have been Takeshi's kill. The teen's been playing with his zombies. Hayato turns a disapproving eye on the tall Japanese even as he rest his head back against the torso.

"Hey, Hibari was playing too," Takeshi proclaims, pointing an accusing figure at a body off to the left.

It had a hole the diameter of Kyouya's tonfa straight through the heart, despite only head damage killing them. Another Takeshi points at had eyes rather carefully gouged out so the sockets were very clean.

"Actually, that last one's mine," Mukuro speaks up. "That one, however, is the Skylark's."

Hayato follows the finger, as does everyone else, but just finds a thick mush with shards of off white inside. It takes a moment to link it to anything resembling a body.

He turns to Kyouya, who's standing on an overturned taxi and staring off in the direction of faint car sounds.

Another jeep pulls up to where Hayato left the first, and a group of teenagers mostly around the same age pile out. They're in Patroller uniform, all with four black stripes on lilac arm bands.


	16. They'll

"Chairman," the red head greets when they get closer. "We're here to replace your first group."

"Like hell you are!" Hayato snaps before he can stop himself. The word 'replace' makes him pissed off, because it sounds like he can't handle it. He sits up from the torso and sees the rest straighten as well.

Takeshi chuckles. "I'm perfectly content right here," he says with a sharp smile.

They were told about the groups switching, of course, and they've even met each other before this. This is technically a trial run so Kyouya can determine if he allows others to join him regularly, or even so one of the groups can move to the other side of Namimori and do chopper runs there.

As it is, the other side of the safe zone is almost touching the sea, but a group could spread out along the border this side and take some of the infected so Kyouya doesn't have to. However, because of the Chairman's dislike for crowds, for the trial run's duration two groups were made and the infected mob has been cut into two sections as well.

If they went according to plan, Hayato and his group should be getting back into the jeep and driving for Namimori to let these new people have a go.

"That isn't up to you," snaps Adelheid. "You all look exhausted anyway, so just get back into the car before you get eaten."

"We can extremely go another round," Ryohei chimes in, voice not muffled anymore because Lambo helped him turn on the helmet's speaker.

Julie rolls his eyes and suddenly both groups are arguing.

"Skylark," Mukuro calls out, voice cutting through the insults being hurled and stopping the rest. "What do you think? Shall we fight to the death?"

Kyouya, who had been watching with something like amused exasperation, nods in agreement.

Before anyone can really register that, faint helicopter sounds reach them.

"Oh," Lambo breaths out, standing on top of the car to give himself a better vantage point. "If that's for us, then we don't have time for fighting each other."

"Not with that attitude, we don't," Mukuro comments.

Hayato scrambles to his feet, the rest following quickly, only to see yet another chopper leading infected towards them. This hoard is at least twice the size of the one they just took down, if not triple.

"I thought there would be more," Kyouya says as the chopper pulls closer, still a few streets away but already most of the zombies are running towards them.

"More?" Enma splutters. "How many do you usually get?"

"About five times both of these put together," Kyouya answers easily. "Sometimes it takes a whole day and the pompadour gets fussy."

"I keep forgetting how huge Japan's population was before," Koyo murmurs.

Hayato blinks, still rather taken aback because he struggled with the group they had just taken down. Only a little bit, but still enough that what Kyouya is describing seems like a sure fire way to get eaten.

No wonder Tetsuya is always so concerned if Kyouya does this every fortnight. Not to mention, they haven't even reached Tokyo. That city is going to be painful to clean.

He rolls his shoulders and grips his dynamite tighter. He'll have to plan better next time – maybe just bring a backpack full of explosives.

* * *

When the fight ends, it takes another half an hour before any of the recruits can move. The second set are better off but they don't want to get up either. While Kyouya waits, he just settles down on top of the semi for a nap.

"Hey," Mukuro calls out in glee. "I found Charlie's angles."

Hayato doesn't want to look, but it's automatic to glance over. Set on the trident spikes are three females - a blond, a red head and one with black hair.

"That looks nothing like-" Kaoru starts.

"Don't," Adelheid cuts in. "It'll just encourage him."

"Speaking of encourage," Mukuro begins, tossing the heads over his shoulder with a flick of the trident. "Look, Skylark, I made you a flower."

Kyouya rolls so he can peek over the edge of the truck to where Mukuro is gesturing. Bodies are arranged in a curved fashion to make a pollen filled centre, while others are in straight spokes out from the circle, like petals.

Kyouya just rolls away again.

"Did you do that as we were fighting?" Lambo gapes, and since he's looking around, his eyes catch on something else. "And what on God's green earth is that?"

They look over to see only bodies with yellow or gold on them arranged oddly. It takes a moment since Hayato is lower to the ground than Lambo but eventually he sees it.

The corpses spell 'discipline' like the DC armbands. Not only that, but the bodies have been ripped apart so only the half wearing those colours is on the pile.

It's very obvious who did that.

"You're all freaks," Hayato declares, and wonders if he should join the second group for next time, since they seem sane.

A snore cuts in then and they look over to find Ryohei on a makeshift nest of bodies.

"All of you," Hayato grumbles.

"What did I do?" Takeshi laughs. "I totally behaved myself."

"So you weren't the one laughing like a maniac when I got hit in the face with a flying hand?" Rauji contests.

Takeshi says nothing but his smile grows.


	17. die

Byakuran sprints for the safe zone fence, cackling madly as his guardians struggle to keep up with the pace, especially since its been an hour at this all out run. The mob of zombies behind them are only meters away, still going strong since they felt no exhaustion.

The radio explicitly stated how the fence worked, so instead of hesitating, Byakuran leapt straight for it. He steps onto the concrete base before shoving at one side of the fence, easily slipping between the two segments to continue his run.

He's sure, that if his Funeral Wreaths had the spare breath, they would be cursing him.

It's his fault for gathering the mob, technically, because he did blast some k-pop out of a boom box as he sprinted through the large function building in Osaka, where every floor was a wide room meant for parties or meetings.

By the end of his run, since he kicked open almost all of the doors, they had hundreds at their heels. It's for a good cause though, because Byakuran wants to know how Namimori handles it.

If they get overrun and the entire safe zone gets slaughtered, well that's not Byakuran's problem.

It would be funny though.

Byakuran lets out a little giggle, ignoring his body screaming at him to just stop for a moment, and idly wonders how long the response team takes.

Not long at all, apparently. A couple cars with what seems to be snowploughs attached to the front speed around the corner, antenna blown back as they charge straight for the mass of runners. They swerve around Byakuran and his guardians before ramming straight into the group of zombies, throwing bodies up into the air comically as others crunch from the hard hit.

A quick glance over his shoulder shows the infected swarming around the cars like water through rocks. Some of them lunge for the stationary vehicles, ripping open the doors or shattering the windows and pouring inside. Byakuran faces forward again and rolls his eyes at the stupidity.

He gets another ten meters before the cars detonate.

The explosion is small enough to not distract the humans running, but also has enough fire power to wipe out a whole lot of infected. The blast is somehow directed towards the majority of the hoard and away from the humans.

Byakuran grits his teeth at being wrong. That was definitely planned, and from the size of the antenna, it's not impossible to assume they were remote controlled with no human presence.

Two more explosions go off, presumably more cars, but the group Byakuran amassed is so big, it barely makes a dent.

Up ahead Byakuran can see people, from the oldest with millions of wrinkles and a cane, to the youngest still unable to even raise their own head. All of them are running, clearly having seen the infected.

Most of them won't make it, Byakuran knows. Some of the citizens won't be able to run fast for whatever reason and they'll be the first to die and join the army of corpses. He gets closer and a wide grin splits his face. It looks decorated, with street stalls of food and further along what seems to be a market.

Did Byakuran just interrupt a festival?

He's suddenly laughing so hard he completely misses the dip in the road. His foot catches and his momentum carries him into a roll. Byakuran ends up on his back, still laughing through his gasps for breath.

His guardians stop -loyal enough to be stupid, or perhaps stupid enough to be loyal- but once they do over half collapse. Bluebell is wild-eyed in panic as she tries desperately to get up again, while Daisy just hugs his rabbit plushie tighter and doesn't bother struggling.

Kikyo and Zakuro step up as first defence against the zombies. Maybe Byakuran and his guardians could have taken them all out, but not now when they can barely move with how strained their bodies are.

Bykauran stares up at the lovely blue sky and just breathes as he listens to the stampede, even feeling it through the tarmac underneath him. He could get up. He could even continue running.

Bluebell, Daisy and Torikabuto can't though.

So he lies there, but he doesn't regret it for a single moment.

A piercing whistle cuts through the air in three short bursts. Almost instantly after a zombie leaps over Byakuran, heading towards the hoard and followed by three more.

Byakuran blinks and then sits up. There's another hoard of zombies, except these are coming from the safe zone.

They charge around the group of humans and clash with the outsiders, ripping and tearing with the same intensity as if their infected opponents are human. They all wear lilac clothes.

"What the fuck?" Zakuro blurts out. His legs give out on him then, and the man drops to the road, staring at the chaos around him.

The city zombies are attacking but the outside ones aren't. It's well known that the infected only attack humans and ignore each other, but only the outsiders are following that rule by simply charging for the humans. As a result, they're being ripped to shreds by the city ones.

Byakuran's gathered hoard is being forced back, and from the other side of the mob comes a lot more cars, except these have humans clad in riot gear pouring out.

Byakuran rises to his feet to see better, gaping at the slaughter. This is the most unconventional defence ever, and Byakuran loves the ridiculousness of it. A smile grows on his face but he keeps the laughter back since he's playing human now.

Somehow, through the noise of gunfire as well as hundreds fighting and dying, Byakuran hears footsteps. They're light and confident, not hesitating for a second as the person walks closer and comes to a stop behind Byakuran.

"Next time, don't come through the pressure fence," suggests a male's voice. It's low and smooth, with not a hint of anger. If anything, it's amused.

Byakuran twists the smirk into a stunned expression before he turns to find a teenager with silver eyes like a polished blade.

"Response time is a lot slower without it," the other continues. "So you might get lucky and kill someone."

"I wasn't trying to hurt anyone," Byakuran denies, only because he wants this person to keep looking at him. "My friends and I were just trying to get away."

Hibari Kyouya, because it can't anyone but the leader of Namimori, simply raises an eyebrow.

Byakuran keeps his shocked expression, since he can't fake guilt very well, and tries to act like a traumatised person because people don't want to be around him when he acts like himself.

"Skylark!" a teasing voice calls out as a purple haired teen saunters up to Byakuran's Kyouya and stands far to close. "Are we heading out to play chess yet? We still have plenty left to use."

Kyouya turns away from Byakuran to glare towards the taller male at his side.

"Oops," the pineapple chuckles. "I forgot that people get twitchy when we mention our games."

"Kyouya!" calls out another voice, cheerful and belonging to a tall teenager with a smile, as he strolls towards them. "Can we still play monopoly with the rest?"

The other teenagers behind the tallest -a silver haired one, one with a lazily closed eye, a girl with purple hair, and one with short white hair- all groan in annoyance. The new arrivals all have casual clothes on with lilac armbands.

"I hate monopoly," the cow print shirt grumbles.

"I'll play it if I have to," the only girl says as they come to a stop beside Kyouya. "I mostly just want to try out the pieces. I've finally got the whistles down."

The silver haired teenager lets out a sharp breath of air in annoyance. "Wish I could whistle," he mutters.

Byakuran watches and listens closely. The ruler of Namimori seems to be a lot more tilted than what normal people would consider healthy. Then again, zombies are running around.

So, tired of being ignored and completely certain that his next course of action will be welcomed, Byakuran speaks up. "You're right," he starts with just the right amount of challenge infused. "Next time, I'll avoid the fence."

Kyouya finally turns back to Byakuran and the edges of his lips curl up into something like a threat. "We're playing Go," Kyouya says. Demands.

"Lead the way," Byakuran murmurs with a sharp grin.

His eyes stay half-lidded as he watches the DC Chairman walk to an idling car and slip inside. He barely notices the rest of the teenagers entering the vehicle. He definitely doesn't notice the still fighting mob a few streets away.

"I'll be back later," he calls over a shoulder to his guardians as he strides for the car.

Heavy sighs follow him.


	18. for

Chrome understands people.

It might sound strange, coming from a girl who first had to put up with parents that really shouldn't have been in charge of a life, and then with the Estraneo and all of their loving care, but she's good at reading people.

Which translates directly to being able to manipulate them.

Chrome knows what she wants, and she's perfectly willing to kneecap a few people to get it. It makes her dangerous – not like in the way of Mukuro who can clinically unmake someone, or the breathtaking, widespread destruction that is Kyouya.

Her danger is insidious. It's slow but once she gets a hold it digs deep and weaves into bones and blood vessels until it's indistinguishable from real flesh - right up until she tears her prey to pieces from the inside out.

So maybe she's not flashy and maybe she can't make people kneel in awe and terror just by being in her mere presence, but if that radio host doesn't remove his hand from Mukuro's crush, she's gonna smack a bitch.

"Chrome?" Mukuro murmurs to her from where the two are hanging at the back of the group. "Is something wrong?"

After the zombie hoard incident, they headed out into the city and fought their way up a relatively low building that was placed next to a large crossing that could be used as a game board. Most of the time was spent teaching the new teenager how to command the zombies properly via short games of checkers.

Kyouya looked annoyed at first because it turns out no one else but him knows how to play Go, and he didn't have the will power to try and teach the rest.

So checkers champion went to Ryohei (only because he and Hayato teamed up due the whole 'not able to whistle' thing), and Byakuran was officially inducted to their group when he accidentally got shoved off the rooftop.

Lambo caught him, and Takeshi caught Lambo, and Ryohei caught Takeshi, and so on until they formed a human chain hanging off the side of a twelve storey building, swaying in the wind over a large group of untrained zombies that had gathered because of how much noise they were making.

Kyouya, the only one still on the roof, calmly held onto Mukuro's ankle and stated that he wouldn't haul them back up until they could sing the entire Namimori middle school anthem.

In fact, they couldn't sing the entire thing because they were all laughing too hard, and Kyouya dropped them.

However, he first ordered the trained infected to dispose of the wild ones and pile them up to form a crash mat, so the landing was softer than it could have been. He's really a softie at heart.

They left after that, only to find the cars they came in gone – clearly by a human perpetrator because zombie can't drive. They did 'twenty-one is in' and threw out different numbers of fingers as they stood in a loose circle.

Lambo was number twenty-one and he declared that they weren't going after the survivors to exact vengeance, citing that maybe whoever did it thought the SUV and attached zombie transport trailer were abandoned.

Hayato pointed out that both had the Namimori insignia on them – which is actually just a bird in flight that Takeshi spray painted on when they first arrived and parked next to a paint store.

Lambo held by his decision so Mukuro challenged him to a duel and won the ensuing rock paper scissors battle. The purple haired teenager chuckled darkly and they all started hunting.

It was absolutely no surprise to anyone that Kyouya tracked them down to a building easily. After scouting the place, Chrome reported that it was a base for what seemed to be yakuza, seeing as the place held very blatant graffiti on the walls declaring exactly that.

Kyouya murmured that he hadn't had yakuza in so long. It sounded a touch wistful, like he was thinking about his favourite food.

They knocked on the door like any polite visitor would, and Ryohei offered passage into Namimori. The yakuza refused, told them to go die, and then backtracked saying that the 'pretty one' could stay.

Mukuro was flattered but also took offence when all the Namimori teenagers turned to him, and the following noise ended up calling a hoard of zombies. Which also got decimated thanks to the natural disaster that masquerades as a group of teenagers.

Unfortunately, the cars got damaged during the one-sided slaughter. They shrugged at each other, uncaring, and started walking home at a meandering pace with a mob of lilac infected trailing behind them.

That's where they are now, scattered about the highway and chatting lightly.

"Hello?" Mukuro calls out teasingly to Chrome. "Are you getting any reception in there?"

"Ah, sorry Mukuro," she says as she blinks out of her thoughts. "Lost my train of thought."

"Then catch a bus," he replies simply and snickers at her unimpressed expression.

Chrome is about to reply when she catches sight of Lambo ducking behind Kyouya to escape an enraged Hayato. The Bovino lets his hands wander and drift lightly across the younger teenager's torso and back as he uses the Chairman for a blockade and dodges any swipes the silver head takes.

"Aren't you going to stop that?" Chrome blurts out instead.

Mukuro raises an eyebrow and follows her gaze to where Kyouya watches the two buzzing around him with an expression that says he's searching for patience.

"There's no need," Mukuro murmurs. "They're not enough to catch his attention."

Kyouya grabs both males by the hair and slams their heads together before letting them drop to the ground groaning, all without breaking stride.

Mukuro's eyes narrow and he nods towards the newest addition who slides up and engages the Chairman in conversation. "He's the one I have to watch out for."

Byakuran coaxes a smile from Kyouya and then a small chuckle.

Chrome's eyes narrow as well. "Don't worry, Mukuro," she says determinedly. "I'll go down with this ship."

"What."

Chrome throws her shoulders back and strides for the two, ignoring Mukuro's confusion behind her. It's a simple matter to get Kyouya's attention, because he likes cute things and she's a cute thing.

He knows she's manipulating him, of course, but Chrome doesn't drop the shy, innocent act and it actually feels nice when the Chairman runs his fingers through her hair like she was a cat.

By the time they reach Namimori, she's secured herself a red armband. Chrome is the first DC recruited since the outbreak, and she'll use her new status to stay as close to the Chairman as possible so she can keep other love interests away from him.

Mukuro gives her a discrete thumbs up and she winks at him.


	19. what

There is a certain responsibility that being a DC entails.

It's not like Chrome doesn't know how respected red armbands are, or how people generally look to them for guidance. However, knowing and experiencing are very different things.

People watch her, but it's not like they're waiting for Chrome to slip up. It's more like awe and curiosity. Suddenly people know her name and they chat easily with her about Namimori or their days.

It's humbling to be honest. She started this with ulterior motives in mind, and while she won't stop shipping like a Navy captain, Chrome actually wants to immerse herself in what being a DC member means.

She wants to help people and be the backbone of Namimori. The DC control the major operations all over Namimori, from director of administration to leading scouting parties overseas.

It's not quite four days after getting a red armband that she finds Kusakabe Tetsuya and asks to be trained. He stares at her for a moment, assessing, and then leads her to one Kurokawa Hana.

The woman is a force to be reckoned with and explains in detail each and every process in Namimori that the DC oversee. Which is pretty much everything, if Chrome is being honest. The lecture is concise and easy to understand and Chrome is blown away by how much actually goes into running an entire country - because that's what Namimori is.

Hibari Kyouya has rebuilt a nation and there's no sign of him slowing down.

Then Tetsuya comes by and picks her up, dropping her off with a DC girl who shows her the ropes when working with the Patroller units. Chrome learns how to trace the helmets and plot out the best course as well as work with Kyouya's chopper runs to account for how many Patrollers are needed on duty.

Tetsuya sweeps by again and ushers her to a male DC who gives her a rundown of the inside security forces and defences set up. He hammers in the information and give tests of scenarios in which Chrome is the only DC around and there's a situation that she needs to help with.

Chrome passes that with flying colours because she's always been able to think on her feet (mostly to keep up with Mukuro).

Tetsuya appears and once more she's transported to another DC. Again and again Chrome meets the people in charge and gets taught secrets that could very easily take down Namimori from the inside out.

She honestly can't explain how honoured she is.

Surely someone must be wary of her, but everyone she meets is entirely focused on teaching her in ways that she'll absorb. Their smiles are genuine and they wish her good luck and sometimes it's too much.

There's a moment in between as Tetsuya and her sit in a car heading to the next DC, that she turns to him and asks flat out why they trust her with this information and why they're bothering to actually teach her.

The teenager is quiet for a moment then all he says is that if Kyouya gave her an armband, then she deserves it. He looks into her eyes and says that they're teaching her in hope that she _earns_ it.

Chrome powers through the rest of the DC in a week, barely getting any sleep at all and only eating when her instructor at that time does. They insist that she can slow down, that she has all the time in the world to learn.

Chrome replies that she wants to learn now.

They give her secretive smiles and ask how Tetsuya is doing.

* * *

It's been a little under three months and a week since the outbreak, and Chrome is a fully fledged Disciplinary Committee member. The welcoming party was extravagant and loud and it seemed like half the safe zone was there to wish her well.

Mukuro looked so proud and Chikusa had to keep a steady supply of tissues for when the mass murderer would get overwhelmed with tears. Kyouya handed over his private number that all DC have and told her welcome home.

She managed to hug him before he got away from the crowding -stabbing herself a little on the hedgehog hidden in the Chairman's pocket- and that night Chrome dreamt of leading people to safety. When she woke up, she decided that reality was still better, and jumped into her new job.

Like all the rest of the red armbands, she can pick up any job sector on the fly and lead like she's spent her whole life training for it.

DC don't have set jobs, they rotate through positions in every industry from agriculture to research and development. They might have a position they like best, but each and every single one of them are more than capable for anything.

During the training period she wondered which people taught the DC in the first place, but during a board meeting with representatives from every town inside the Namimori safe zone, Kyouya swooped in and sat at the head of the table.

He rolled his eyes a lot and called everyone an herbivore at least once, but he fixed all the problems brought before him and flew off again before Chrome could pull her chin off the floor.

Hibari Kyouya is a different breed altogether.

Disregarding the rather enigmatic Chairman, Chrome's first position as a DC is one she recognises. The job she chose when she first registered in Namimori is at the communications centre, three buildings down from the radio tower.

Chrome used to take calls about disturbances in the community and put the caller through to the right people to take care of it. She was assigned to a different, higher level field a few weeks in where she mostly relayed information from other bases of Namimori like overseas sectors that work on radio towers or getting large scale machinery working.

Quite a few groups are dabbling with pharmaceuticals or larger agricultural areas to farm while less care for manufacturing.

She knows one of her co-workers had been assigned the Beserker group that started clearing zombies from the other end of Japan, and he was constantly pulling his hair out in frustration. Something about all Hibaris being insane.

Her new DC position means she supervises the others, and even has the last say on major decisions with any high profile people. Well, 'high profile' generally means 'large ego', as the DC she's working with informs her.

Since Chrome is still new, she'll be moving across jobs every so often but always with a partner in case she gets stuck on an issue that needs immediate attention.

Chrome fields calls from other safe zones and survivors, and while sometimes they asks for aide or they just want to let Namimori know about the situation in case trouble comes unexpectedly, most are incredibly rude.

They'll ask for the Chairman just so he can clear out a compound for them to live in or they'll demand resources and people. She has no idea why these people think they deserve to get help from Namimori.

The DC don't have to go out of their way to help others. It isn't a right other groups have, it's a privilege. If she get asked by a small group who don't want to leave their home, fine. The requests for help are usually filled, like with the mafia safe zone that Namimori have been in contact with almost from the start.

It's the large half-cults that are the problem. Quite a few are religious wack jobs and the rest aren't any better with conditioning and peer pressure. There's an all women group that refuses to accept any male no matter the age, and they forcefully take females passing in the area.

Namimori has a base a few hours away and set regular patrols for any people looking to leave. They've stopped some abductions and there's been discussion of sending in a female to have a look on the inside and see if it's fit for living.

The DC have had to do that before, with a rather large compound that held leaders clearly abusing their authority. Somehow zombies equalled middle ages, and the group took to it eagerly with regards to mandatory viewing at public hangings and brutal corporal punishment.

Namimori ripped that place to shreds, and once everyone was removed, set fire to the remains. That isn't a metaphor – the cream coloured armbands (to signify overseas Patrollers) literally set fire to the tents, caravans and makeshift houses.

Many of the perpetrators were all mysteriously misplaced. Even stranger was the thank you note the scientist Verde sent.

Occasionally Namimori will get requests for aide but most ask to be transported to the safe zone, and a team is usually sent out with a plane to pick up the newcomers. The radio has been playing over most of the world at this point, listing airports they land in on rotation and bases they've set up.

They have twenty-six teams of cream armbands, who not only grab survivors but also set up a well-structured and well protected compound. Sometimes they'll clean out zombies and expand outwards but it's entirely dependent on what the Patrollers want.

It's not a priority at the moment because most of the effort is focused on Japan and making it a fully zombie free zone. (However, occasionally the Chairman can't help himself and ends up flying overseas to play with the zombies there.)

It's unfortunate, but sometimes the requests for transport are traps.

Usually when that happens, the group requesting help is a lot bigger than the intelligence received beforehand, and it turns into an ambush. Most attacks are avoided altogether or fended off, but one time Kyouya himself went to get back the Patrollers that were captured and held for ransom.

He left the group there, most of them with crippling injuries courtesy of an angry Chairman.

The announcement he made himself on the radio has been typed out and framed in the main DC building.

"The next time some upstart, herbivorous cult has the idiotic idea to hurt one of  _mine_ , I'll paint you across the walls. You're going to damn well wish it was the zombie apocalypse instead of just an infestation."

It has also been quoted many, many times by play writers and spoken by actors in the theatres. Children can sometimes be heard misquoting it, a lot more frequently when it first came out but it's not rare to see a little seven year old clutching plastic tonfas and hear them growl out the words.

The original message has been replayed occasionally on the radio as well, mainly just because people like hearing it. Kyouya's voice was calm but with an undercurrent of poison that stated very clearly that he was not making idle threats.

Chrome knows for a fact that Mukuro has the sound clip on his phone and listens to it sometimes.

The phone rings then and she jerks slightly, peering around the empty office and through the glass walls to the main floor where people are scattered about taking calls and scribbling hurriedly on paper. It's only been around a week since she first started as a proper DC, and yet the sight has become normal.

Her eyes lock onto the phone at one corner of the DC desk and she picks it up, falling into routine.

"Namimori here, what is the basis of your call?"


	20. they

"Boss, they're sending the closest Patroller unit," Romario informs Dino as soon as he hangs up the phone.

Dino lets out a sigh in relief but doesn't relax.

The tall building they're currently in is surrounded by zombies in a one block radius. The guns they first escaped Chiavarone mansion with have long since run out of ammo, and while all of Dino's subordinates know how to fight in close range, taking on that many infected is a death wish.

The outbreak three months and a week ago took over half of the Chiavarone famiglia and Dino arrived home through the panic to find the mansion filled with corpses of his closest friends.

They could have conceivably stayed in the mansion and cleared it of infected, but it was hard to point a gun at someone he knew personally, and even harder to pull the trigger.

So they all left it behind and moved through the streets, making it to a safe house not too far away. Those first few weeks were horrific – not knowing what was happening or how many survived. Too many of Dino's famiglia were struck down by wounds they received during the outbreak, and the constant tense atmosphere took its toll on the mind and body.

More would have died, if not all, if Reborn hadn't been there. The hitman was visiting his old student when the infected swarmed into the streets of Italy, and he stayed despite having a better chance of survival alone.

The hitman was a monster in his own right, and quite frankly Dino wasn't far behind, but with a group as large as the Chiavarone to care for, the two couldn't be in every place at once and sometimes infected slipped through their defences.

However, while Dino was angry at himself for how many he'd lost, he couldn't help but be relieved that only those people were lost instead of a higher number.

They hopped from place to place, constantly on the move because safe houses always inevitably got overrun, until one day they stopped at one of Reborn's hideouts. A letter had been slipped under the door, a while ago from the dust collected on it, and after Reborn read through it he rolled his eyes so hard Dino thought he might have strained something.

And suddenly they changed direction entirely and started for Japan. To find a middle schooler. Who would apparently protect them.

When Dino raised concerns, Reborn just shook his head and stated that it was an option Dino could take as the boss of Chiavarone. They didn't have to go.

Dino decided against it, insisting that he couldn't just bet his famiglia on the off chance a little boy turned out to be the second coming of Jesus. So the Chiavarone plus one hitman continued up to Denmark and slipped into Sweden.

The note never explicitly stated that a safe zone was in Namimori, only that maybe Reborn should find Hibari Kyouya, and that part always made Dino wonder if he was being selfish. Dino wavered and eventually asked if Reborn was supposed to find the boy to protect him.

Reborn laughed himself to tears.

They were supposed to be walking stealthily through the streets to the next site, so the noise called quite a few wandering, and Reborn couldn't be bothered to aim properly through his hilarity.

Dino never asked again.

It was only two and a half months into the outbreak that they thought to pick up a radio. Dino very seriously told Romario that he was the new Chiavarone head, and that he should never, ever listen to Dino's opinion, and just not let Dino have an opinion at all.

Cheerful laughter came from the radio as the Chiavarone tried to stop Dino from slamming his head into the wall. Reborn encouraged the wall loving by pointing out how they all would have been happily settled into a safe zone if Dino chose to go to Namimori.

The guy on the radio, in between gossiping about someone called Mukuro getting to close to the Chairman, read out a list of airports that Namimori visited on rotation and then a list of permanent bases.

Dino straightened up and declared that they were going to Norway, where the closest visitation happened. If they had a satellite phone it would have been easier to just call in their position and get a Namimori team to meet them at the closest airport, but they settled for having to find the nearest visited site.

They made the trip in three weeks and the next Namimori visit to the airport would be in a week. They settled down to wait, a lot more relaxed now that they have somewhere to go.

The radio was almost constantly on and it wasn't strange to hear the Chiavarone subordinates arguing about who they shipped. Dino really thought they should have had better things to do, but he'd be a hypocrite. He shipped OT7 so hard an iceberg couldn't take him down.

It was hard to not get sucked into the drama the night time Japanese radio host spins. They find themselves cheering whenever the host reports yet another successful chopper run, and then listening intently when it's usually followed by a strange anecdote.

Even Reborn chuckles when he hears a story about the Chairman and Fon meeting accidentally, and then the property damage and high speed chase that follows.

There was something about the Arcobaleno Skull being the only one to catch up to Kyouya as well, which got a raised eyebrow from the hitman, but he didn't look anything near to surprised at the information.

Around a day before they're supposed to be visited, the lookout finds a wandering group of zombies meandering towards the control tower they're holed up in. She informs the rest and they swarm out of the building to take them down, but more keep showing up. They must be migrating from the cities because there's no food left.

It gets to the point where they can't leave the control tower to get supplies in the terminals. It's fine, because they've stocked up, but a satellite phone was found there a few days ago. No one grabbed it, because they were being picked up anyway, but now they all regretted that decision.

Now, Reborn could take them all out, especially with Dino's help, but the ammo stores were pitiful and the hitman outright refused to use anything but his gun as a weapon. If it became a matter of life and death, maybe Reborn would ignore his self-imposed rule, but even then Dino isn't sure.

The Chiavarone head could probably wipe out the whole group himself, but more infected could come or he could make a mistake, and really one was all it took. Plus, there was no chance in hell that he was going to let his men and women go out there.

Before Dino could say anything, Reborn grabbed two others, all the ammo left, and ploughed straight through the hoard of zombies outside. The three cut a quick path through and sprinted for the terminals. Most of the zombies stayed to try and get into the tower, but enough followed that Dino was worried.

It took a nerve wracking wait, but eventually the speakers in the terminals started blasting a Namimori radio station – the Italian one this time which was playing music. The zombies around the tower fled to the noise, and the two Chiavarone members who left came racing back with the phone clutched victoriously in one of their hands.

The speakers cut out then, because the generator inside was already half broken. It was a miracle that it was started in the first place.

Dino waited, and waited, and waited, but the zombies flooded back to the tower and still Reborn didn't show up.

One of the men who ran out with the hitman looked confused, and said that Reborn was right behind them. Romario stepped up beside Dino and placed a hand on his Boss' shoulder, before simply stating that it's Reborn and there's no way a man like that could have been taken down.

Dino took a deep breath and asked if Romario could call the Namimori number the radio stations repeat.


	21. did.

"They'll be here within the day, Boss," Romario says. "Miss Chrome promised a rescue."

"That's good," Dino murmurs, unable to take his eyes off the window, staring at the terminal below. "How are they going to get to us? Will they have enough people to get rid of the infected, so we can get Reborn?"

"She didn't say," Romario answers. "I told her about the infected and the… misplaced man, but all she said was to stay calm and indoors because a team of Patrollers was coming."

"'Indoors', huh?" Dino sighs. "Alright, we stay in here unless the infected break the door down."

Which was unlikely since the security in the control tower was well thought out. Plus Reborn got his hands on some materials, so only something over apocalypse level might be able to make it inside from the first or second levels. If it tries really hard, that is.

They settle in for the wait, always aware of the infected throwing themselves at the walls and scratching at the tower. The noise they make is so loud, it drowns out anything else.

So when something does happen, it comes with no warning.

The window shatters, and even as the Chiavarone throw themselves back and raise arms to protect their faces, they're already aiming any weapons they carry at the intruder.

The body that slammed through the glass rolls to a stop and then lurches to its feet, shaking off broken glass and jerking its head around.

"That was so extreme!" the white haired teenager roars, decked out in a black uniform.

The next one to be launched past the already broken window hits the ground as well and also rolls to absorb impact. The teenager jumps to his feet and immediately starts swearing in outrage. He's also clad in the same uniform, if a bit altered.

"You don't throw people off a fucking plane, you demented bird!" the silver haired teenager screams out of the window.

He gets a body thrown at him in reply.

The third to enter barely misses the second -only because the silver headed teen dives out of the way- and rolls before popping up laughing. The uniform is akin to the others, and Dino starts to slowly realise that these people are the rescue team.

The next two come in right after the third.

One is dressed in the full black gear and actually has a helmet on. He tosses more helmets at the others after he gets to his feet and they slip them on, the outside display coming to life and reading out their full names across the visor.

Lambo, Takeshi, Ryohei and Hayato apparently.

The other comes through the window just as fast as the others but lands easily without having to roll. They straighten up from a crouch, also without a helmet, and chuckles with a kufufufu as they rest their trident's end on the ground.

The sixth one drops in lightly after a few seconds, ending in a slight crouch like the one before, and straightens up as he munches on a bag of marshmallows that somehow survived the ride. He's also in the standard uniform but it's without an accompanying helmet and it's been bleached as white as his hair.

The last one misses the window.

There's a stunned pause and then the teens look at each other before racing over to the broken window to look down. Dino can barely hear the sound of an aeroplane flying off over the commotion down below.

"Six," a faint voice calls up.

"Son of a Hibari," Hayato hisses out. "That's cheating."

Then all of the newcomers are scrambling over the control panel to fling themselves back out of the window.

Dino and the rest of the Chiavarone stay frozen as the Namimori Patrollers wreak havoc below with a gleeful intensity. Occasionally they can be heard calling up numbers that steadily grow larger, and it's only when they hit forties does Dino realise it's a body count.

"Okay," Dino says slowly. "So… I think we're being rescued?"

"Should we help them?" Romario wonders.

"Fifty-seven!"

"Zombie without a limb is a half point!"

"I'm still winning either way!"

Dino hums. "No, no I think they're good."

They do end up un-barricading the door and stepping outside, but most of the infected are gone and those who aren't, the teens race for.

It's a close call but the black haired teen, who didn't bother coming through the window, deploys chains from his tonfas and that reach allows him the last point over the purple one. Third is the albino - rather impressive since he was eating his sweets during the entire battle.

The others actually got distracted by arguing over what gives points. Apparently no legs or one leg counts as a third, while no arms or one arm counts as a half.

Dino watches, incredulous, as the winner then pulls a marker from his pocket and starts writing the word 'Loser' on the other teenagers' foreheads. The others grumble half-heartedly but don't seem to care – like they're too used to it to bother.

The aeroplane the Namimori teens came in lands on the runway, revealing it to be a cargo plane – pretty small for its class but still more than enough for all of the Chiavarone. It circles around and lines up to take off again. Dino waits but no one emerges. Apparently the teens are the entire rescue team.

How is Namimori still standing?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good question, Dino.


	22. The

"Well, that was entirely expected."

Dino jerks and whirls around to face the terminals, staring with wide eyes as Reborn emerges from the building and casually waltzes up like he didn't disappear for hours.

"Reborn? What the hell, where did you go?" Dino cries, moving to meet the man.

"I found something," Reborn says calmly. "Got a bit distracted, I'll admit." He nods to the DC member, the only one with a red armband. "Nice to see you again."

"Fon sent you a message," the DC says.

"I got it," Reborn assures. "But Dino here needs to get better at making decisions."

The black haired male nods and then tilts his head in confusion. Dino follows the teen's line of sight and finds a green chameleon on Reborn's fedora.

"This is Leon," Reborn introduces, reaching up a hand to scoop up the lizard. "He was inside the airport." Then Reborn actually holds the animal out to the DC for the teenager to hold.

The DC takes the lizard gently and strokes a finger down its head. It seems to lean up into the motion happily. The black haired boy's coat shifts and a head peeks up from an inside pocket.

"This is Roll," the DC murmurs, shifting the lizard to one hand so he could pull out a hedgehog and hold it up to Reborn.

The hitman accepts it and Dino gets pushed into the background as they both start chatting about caring for pets and how cute they can be.

Dino gives up on understanding the world.

Now that they have Reborn, they pile into the plane and take up seats along the benches either side. Bottles of water and a box of muesli bars is passed to the Chiavarone famiglia and Dino munches on one as he takes a seat beside Reborn and with the Namimori Patrollers.

"Have any of you see Hibari Kyouya before?" Dino blurts out as he balls up the wrapper and tucks it into a pocket to throw later. He's been curious as to what the guy looks like, and his mind has conjured up a buff, scarred teenager with a resting face that looks distinctly homicidal.

The teens all pause and turn to look at him.

"Well," purple one begins. "We are Patrollers, after all. He tends to join the regular expeditions so we do see him quite… often."

"What does he look like?" Dino asks and then backtracks. "I don't mean that in a weird way, it's just because I hear so much about him on the radio and I'm curious."

"What do you think he looks like?" Lambo responds, a slow smile creeping across his face.

Dino hesitates, unsure if this is a trap.

"Is he… tall?" Hayato offers up as a starting point. There's a smile on his face as well.

Dino shoots a glance to Reborn but the hitman is blank faced with both the lizard and hedgehog in his lap. The Chiavarone boss turns back to the teens. "I guess… yeah, I see him as really tall."

"Really muscled?" the white haired one suggests lightly with a smirk.

"He'd have to be, wouldn't he?" Dino shrugs. "I've heard stories about chopper runs, he'd have to be ridiculously strong so he must be insanely buff."

"I can't see it," Ryohei murmurs, for some reason staring at the black haired one. He gets elbowed by Takeshi.

"Any defining features?" Takeshi chimes in.

"He fights a lot, so scars maybe," Dino offers up. "I have no idea why, but I also see him as hairy."

Lambo chokes a bit and splutters. The purple one bats at the Bovino's shoulder, looking like he's holding back laughter.

"Why?" the black haired one speaks up.

Dino shakes his head. "I don't know, it just happens." Dino shrugs and scans them all. "I know I'm wrong from the way you guys are acting, so what does he look like?"

They all glance to the DC.

"You'll find out soon enough," the red armband says.

"Yeah, he's kind of hard to miss," Takeshi chuckles. "There was this one time, he found an escaped Liger from the zoo and spent the whole day playing with it."

"Where did it go?" Ryohei wonders.

"He became… a gift," the DC says quietly.

The purple one, white one and Takeshi immediately snap to attention.

"Birthday gift?" the marshmallow lover asks with a strange intensity. "Or a like-like gift?"

"Is that why you have Roll?" the purple teen demands. "Who have you been seeing?"

Dino watches the confrontation in confusion, feeling like he's missing a lot of things.

"Does Fon know about…" Reborn trails off and gives a vague gesture to encompass all of the teenagers.

"Yes," the black haired one says calmly. "And he encourages it so they'll watch me."

"Have to play nice with the family," Takeshi chuckles.

"Boss!" Romario calls from the other end of the plane, gesturing the Chiavarone head over. Dino stands and excuses himself, retreating to his right-hand man and away from the inside jokes.

* * *

They alight from the plane and take the cars waiting for them outside the airport to an administration building. The Chiavarone get registered there and write out any pertinent information while the Patrollers that arrived with them disappear further into the building.

Reborn doesn't bother filling in the forms, and when Dino is about to ask, the black haired teenager reappears and hands over a file. Reborn reads through it quickly and thanks the DC member, tucking the papers into an inside pocket of his suit.

The worker assigned to them tosses out suggestions and the Chiavarone all pick houses in an empty complex. They're handed keys and wallets filled with cash before being told to come back to the office within a week to pick out jobs.

It's only when the Chiavarone are half out the door that the teenagers all return with a purple DC girl, who immediately greets her Chairman.

Dino stares at the black haired boy – apparently one Hibari Kyouya, and then turns to Romario. "I told you not to let me have an opinion," he sighs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is so bad, but I'm too lazy to change it.


	23. Disciplinary

It's been fun.

No, really, Xanxus has been having a lot of fun.

At first it pissed him off since all of his subordinates were dying, either from the first change into infected or being mauled to death by both zombies and humans.

But then when he abandoned the overrun Varia headquarters and took to the streets, one of those dead things finally got past the barrier of Guardians and he took out one of his guns.

A bullet straight to the brain, and the head practically exploded.

" _Oh fuck the hell yes_ ," Xanxus breathes out, staring wide-eyed at the crumpled body by his feet.

"Boss," Lussuria begins cautiously, like trying to not startle a wild animal. "We really should get to a safe house."

"Fuck the shitty safe house!" Xanxus barks with a feral grin. "It's fucking head exploded!" He throws back his head and laughs.

"God damn you Fran," Squalo hisses quietly to the teen in the back ground. "I know you let that one through on purpose."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Fran replies, trying for innocence - but not willing to try hard enough so it comes out in a monotone voice.

"Come at me, trash!" Xanxus roars, firing a spray of bullets that all find their mark.

Infected are being decimated in a large radius around the Varia boss, their heads being ripped to shreds under the onslaught of metal projectiles. The streets are far bloodier as the bullets tear flesh and blood away and throw it on walls and the occasional abandoned car.

One of said cars gets Xanxus' attention and promptly goes up in flames as the man fires an entire clip of incendiary bullets into it. 

The humans are still running and screaming, but it's now because of Xanxus instead of the zombies.

* * *

The first time Xanxus meets Hibari Kyouya, the man is surrounded by infected, and the rest of the Varia commanders watch from a rooftop a safe distance away as he gleefully slaughters his way through them all.

A helicopter flies overhead and then backtracks a bit, hovering. Xanxus takes a moment to look up and finds a black blur launch itself from the chopper and plummet to the ground.

When it lands, it craters the pavement and sliver chains whip out, tearing through infected. The chains retract and it whirls as tonfa flash in the sunlight, cracking through bone and flesh in precise, quick movements.

It's power and death wrapped in the form of a teenager.

Xanxus grins and strides for the boy, the infected around him taking barely a smidgen of his focus when they rush him and he has to shoot. He barely takes note of the helicopter taking off.

The boy turns to face Xanxus and watches the Varia boss confidently cuts a path through the walking dead, leaving true corpses in his wake with ease.

The teenager smiles and they meet in the middle.

"God damned Hibaris," Mammon mutters.

Squalo lets out a low whistle as he watches the two rip into each other. Even from half a block away, Squalo can hear them clashing, the sound of metal tonfa screeching against the guns Xanxus wields.

Xanxus knocks a tonfa from the kid's hand and the teen just comes back even fiercer. It's Xanxus who runs out of bullets first and both pause, three meters of distance between them and a hoard of infected collapsed at their feet.

On some silent command, they both toss their weapons down and sprint for each other. They throw out hits so fast their limbs blur. Eventually they leap backwards, panting, but the pause lasts for a second before they charge again.

This time they forgo any technique and just slam into each other with as much force as they can manage. Xanxus wins that one, obviously, considering how much bigger he is than the teenager.

They hit the ground with Xanxus on top and start rolling – not even trying to do damage now, just playing around. The kid scrapes up a handful of rotten flesh from the infected scattered around and shoves it down Xanxus' top.

The Varia boss retaliates by mashing a handful into the kid's hair and they're both laughing.

"There's two of him," Bel comments dryly.

Lussuria lets out a hum. "I mean, I love my boss… but in moderation."

The helicopter, which had been circling around the battle field, comes to hover over the building they were standing on. They're already near the edge so it has space to land on the rooftop.

One of the two teenagers inside steps out, the pompadour making his way over to them with a neutral expression.

"Tetsuya Kusakabe," he introduces himself in Italian with a short bow. "Am I right to assume that man is yours?" he asks calmly.

"Squalo Surperbi, and yeah, that's our boss Xanxus," Squalo answers. "I'm guessing that kid is your one?"

"He's Kyouya Hibari, the… owner of Namimori," Tetsuya explains. "I'm sorry about the whole situation over there, the Chairman gets excited when he meets strong people."

Said Chairman is currently hovering over Xanxus on his hands and knees, and both of them are grinning like feral beasts at each other, covered in gore head to toe from the earlier fight. He says something and Xanxus roars with laughter before they're both rolling around again.

"No," Squalo says dismissively to the apology. "It's fine, Xanxus gets the same way."

"He was getting bored with just fighting zombies," Lussuria states. "They die too easily – wasn't a challenge for him." He smiles and holds out a hand. "I'm Lussuria, sweetheart."

Tetsuya accepts the handshake and looks to the rest. They introduce themselves one by one, with the unedited mafia version. So Bel says Prince the Ripper and Levi goes on a rant about being Xanxus' most trusted subordinate.

Tetsuya takes this without a twitch, but considering his boss, it's no surprise that he can roll with the punches.

They chat for a while and the Varia learn about Namimori, the safe zone quickly expanding in Japan. Tetsuya gives them an invitation to join, and a writes down a list of sites that the Patrollers tend to visit.

He explains that they don't have a concrete plan yet, they're just here to get a few radio towers working and see if any country managed to survive.

Squalo raises an eyebrow at the information. It's been just over a month since what people are calling the outbreak. If these DC guys are already this well set out, Squalo considers what they could do in a year.

(They won't need a year.)

Eventually Tetsuya insist that the Namimori kids have to leave and continue with their planned route. The Varia are weary of trying to take away Xanxus' new pet, but they concede that they won't stop Tetsuya from asking for Kyouya back.

They troop down the building and step into the street, walking over the infected because trying to avoid stepping on one is impossible.

The two have separated –kind of- and are now sitting cross-legged in front of each other with their knees touching. They seem to be talking about kill counts and subordinates who don't understand their humour.

"And then he says herbivores get disturbed when I spell things out with corpses," Kyouya cries, throwing his arms up in disbelief. "Like, they're my kills, why should I stop just because herbivores get queasy?"

Xanxus scoffs. "It ridiculous what trash get concerned about. This one time, my Varia half tackled me to get the flamethrower out of my hands." He shakes his head, incredulous. "I mean, yeah, the zombies on fire ran around and caught other things on fire, and maybe it was a bit more difficult to kill them while avoiding the flames, but still."

The both sigh in exasperation, echoed by Tetsuya and Squalo.

"Chairman, we should get going," Tetsuya speaks up when he reaches the two.

Kyouya looks up at him and stares until he twitches. Then the Chairman sighs and gets to his feet gracefully. "I will be keeping this one," he informs Tetsuya calmly.

Xanxus chuckles darkly. "I think you've got it the other way around."

Kyouya turns to stare at him and then smiles with too many teeth.

"Chairman, please?" Tetsuya tries.

Kyouya rolls his eyes but nods. As Tetsuya goes to collect the scattered tonfa, the teenager turns back to Xanxus. "Until next time," he says, and his jacket flares out when he turns and strides for the chopper just landing on the street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What was that? Millions of people have died horrifically? 
> 
> Yes, but look at my adorable Xanxus.


	24. Committee

Xanxus pouts for a while and they catch him staring after faint aeroplane sounds when one passes by. It gets to the point where they take out the list Tetsuya wrote and subtly slide it into Xanxus' reach.

It takes a week for Xanxus to decide and they end up hunting down a group of cream armbands. The Namimori soldiers cringe back in terror when Xanxus orders them to bring out a DC. The DC, however, takes in the tall and scarred mafia boss calmly.

"Bring the little feral trash next time," Xanxus snaps at the DC before stomping off again.

Kyouya then responds with another DC. "Come to Namimori, monkey king, and I'll show you a true carnivore's playground."

This back and forth goes on for a while until Xanxus gets so insulted, he takes up the challenge and arrives in Japan, a little less than one month and a half into the outbreak.

Tetsuya and Squalo commiserate from a safe distance away as the two battle maniacs take out infected that have the bad luck to be attracted to the destruction - in between taking shots at each other.

When Xanxus runs out of bullets, Kyouya once again throws his tonfa down and they start fighting bare handed which inevitably turns into tumbling around on the ground and shoving bits of zombie down each other's clothes like they're kids playing with snow.

Fon turns up around then, and Mammon very determinedly does not acknowledge his existence. Squalo learns that Fon sent a message but Mammon ignored it. Xanxus wouldn't have taken up the offer of sanctuary anyway, so Squalo shrugs it off.

However, Mammon snaps when Fon calls them Viper, and tosses the martial artist off the rooftop. He falls onto Xanxus and Kyouya –not doing much damage considering it was only five storeys- only for them to take offence to being used as a landing mat.

The three of them break Sapporo.

* * *

The next time they meet is a little less than two months in, and instead of springing into a fight, Kyouya asks why Xanxus allows the others to fight next to him.

Xanxus glares at the rest of the Varia until they leave and the two have a short conversation before moving on to racing each other to the highest kill count. The Leaning Tower of Pisa goes down as a casualty.

When Kyouya steps into the plane, he leaves a satellite phone as well as a private number in Xanxus' hand.

* * *

They meet as often as they can make it –usually in Italy or wherever Xanxus is, because breaking Namimori is actually a bad thing, as Tetsuya continually insists- but one of the most memorable is on Xanxus' birthday, a little over two and a half months since the outbreak.

Kyouya drops into the airport on a cargo plane and when he emerges he has a beautiful white animal with black stripes and a huge mane beside him.

The teenager walks over to Xanxus, the large cat trailing at his side, and tells the Varia boss that the animal is a liger and that he's a present.

They spend the entire time playing with the deadly creature. Just rolling around with it or killing things with it. They end up falling asleep on the large animal's side, curled up together after a long day of slaughtering hundreds.

Tetsuya hesitates, understandably, when it's time to leave and he has to wake up Kyouya. The pompadour would just pick up the teenager and carry him to the plane if he could, but the smallest shift in the environment can wake up the Chairman.

Squalo solves the problem for Tetsuya, because Xanxus is the same and the Varia have had practice with this. They capture a few zombies and release them again near the two so the infected are the ones to get bashed to death.

* * *

A few days later, Xanxus strides through a wary group of cream armbands and takes a seat on the plane heading back to Namimori.

Kyouya is speechless when the man literally kicks down the Chairman's door and presents him with a box that has holes in the top. An adorable hedgehog peeks its head out when the lid is lifted and Kyouya gets an odd expression on his face, like determination mixed with sadness.

Xanxus freezes and looks around in panic but Kyouya snaps out of it and names the animal Roll. They spend the rest of the day in Kyouya's backyard, with Roll on the Chairman's head and Bester lounging at Xanxus' feet, ordering around zombies in games of chess.

* * *

Squalo isn't even surprised when Xanxus takes up a request from Kyouya and heads back into Italy to hunt down some trash. The Varia have maybe too much fun as they slide back into their enforcer role, especially since it's Vongola they're dealing with, but they all agree they like roaming the world better and take off again.

Time flies by as they meet in between Kyouya's busy schedule running Namimori. It's now three and a half months in and Kyouya brings lilac armbands to their next meeting.

Squalo sucks in a breath through his teeth as he watches Xanxus simmer in rage when the teenagers hover around Kyouya and take his attention away from the Varia boss.

It's entirely deliberate as well, on the part of Byakuran and Mukuro. Takeshi they're not too sure about, because he has that easy going smile on his face. He might not know what he's doing, or he's just good at hiding it.

Bester prowls over to Kyouya for a scratch and the three teens get dark looks on their faces.

"Poor boss," Lussuria murmurs. "His crush is surrounded by others."

Bel chokes a little and has to leave because he's laughing too hard.

"I'll get the sword trash," Squalo plans. "You get the boxer, Fran has pineapple, Bel's got dynamite, Levi's on the cow print kid and Mammon distracts marshmallow."

They nod and break the little circle they have to start the hunt. They get Xanxus two hours alone with Kyouya before the entire thing turns into a free for all fight and the Chairman willingly gets sucked in.

After Kyouya leaves they try to discuss assassination for the other love interests, but Xanxus denies any and all feelings for Kyouya, calls them trash, and throws alcohol at them.

Even Bester gives the Varia boss an exasperated look.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So now you know what Kyouya has been doing in the background when the Patrollers couldn't take notes on him. I.e. Kyouya asking why Xanxus puts up with the Varia then leads to his encounter with Lambo.
> 
> If anyone caught that 'Vongola' hint, it doesn't make sense now, but it does come into play later. Just hold on for now XD.


	25. will

Gamma smiles as Yuni tugs on his hand in her excitement, the little girl staring after the Namimori founder. Aria beside him is also watching with a fond look, leaning into her mother's shoulder and partially covering up the lilac armband there with five bold, black stripes.

Luche giggles at her granddaughter's bubbly glee and nods in allowance when the little girl looks up. Gamma rolls his eyes when Luche cracks at the adorableness and gives permission, but obligingly lets go of Yuni's hand.

The little girl immediately sprints off to join the crowd with the other little kids, most not even reaching the chest of the teenager they surround.

Hibari Kyouya stands in the middle of the park with a wide group of children hovering around him, the DC Chairman holding a large, opaque plastic box tucked under one arm. Further away stands the parents in a loose circle, most holding cameras.

A hush goes over the crowd as Kyouya holds up an arm. As he lowers the limb slowly, the children move in synchronicity at the command as they also lower themselves to the grass in dead silence.

Kyouya scans the seated kids around him, all peering up with wide eyes. Then he also gracefully sits with crossed legs, placing the box in his lap.

He opens the lid with large holes drilled into it and reaches inside. The children wait with baited breath as the Chairman slowly lifts out a tiny puppy and places it in the hands of a waiting boy beside him. Kyouya waits patiently as the boy gets a proper hold on the animal, and then dips into the box again.

Slowly, with all the care in the world, Kyouya takes out more and more potential pets, handing them around. The children have done this enough times to know that they should speak softly around the animals, and that they should always play with them gently.

The Patrollers don't only rescue people, they bring in any survivors at all. Quite often they'll find animal shelters or zoos where the staff have either escaped or have been turned into infected.

The Patrollers try their best to release most of the animals into the wild in a safe place, but most of the ones they find are domesticated or too young to release by themselves.

Every so often, an announcement will be put out to meet up at a particular park, and the rescued animals will be handed out so the children can try and beg their parents to let them keep the pet.

Further away from the circle of parents sits a few large pens, holding the bigger animals who are also circled by people looking to give them a home.

The children around Kyouya are slowly forming groups and chatting with the other kids nearby as they play with the small animals they have. A few parents are already looking resigned to taking a pet home by the end of the day.

There's a scream of shock and heads snap around to see a small leopard cub launch itself at a silver haired teenager. The other teens, with animals scattered between them, are laughing instead of helping. People ignore the incident, not worried because the teenagers all have lilac armbands with four black stripes, and one girl even has DC red.

Gamma turns back in time to see Kyouya sigh in exasperation and set the now empty plastic box to the side as he stands. He gets halfway up, but pauses on one knee when a little boy flops into his abdomen.

The fearless kid reaches out and grabs fistfuls of the black coat in a hug, golden yellow hair almost blinding in the sun as wide black eyes stare up at the Chairman with awe.

The Chairman seems to have a staring contest with the little boy. Half a minute passes and Kyouya reaches forward, scooping up the kid, and gets to his feet with the boy on his hip.

Gamma raises an eyebrow when the teenager heads over to the group of Patrollers, and without even breaking stride, gently scoops up the cub and deposits in on the ground before flicking the victim on the forehead.

The silver haired Patroller splutters and turns on the rest in annoyance when they snicker.

The Chairman continues on his route and ends up at one of the large pens. Kyouya vaults over the chest high fence and wanders through the grazing horses until the boy in his arms points at a pure black mare whose coat shines in the sun.

Kyouya follows the unspoked demand and walks over, first swinging the boy up into the saddle before easily mounting himself. The Chairman leads the horse around in a wide circle to let the kid get a feel for it, before abruptly jumping the fence and taking off.

"Perhaps you should go and find that child's parents," comes a voice from behind, unconcerned despite the suggestion.

Gamma, Luche and Aria turn to see Fon and Tetsuya standing behind them, the Arcobaleno having spoken to the Vice-Chairman.

Tetsuya hums noncommittally. "Let's give it an hour first."

"Good luck getting that kid away from him," Aria says, entirely genuine in wishing the DC well.

"Thank you, Miss Aria. I'll need it," Tetsuya adds.

"I'm sure you could get Reborn to help," Luche suggests. "He knows how to ride a horse."

They all turn to where Luche gestures and find the hitman sitting on the grass, engaged in a stare off with a komodo dragon, the small lizard on his hat also participating.

The rest of the Arcobaleno in Japan are scattered around, also riveted by the animals. In fact Skull is half inside the makeshift aquarium, hugging a large red octopus.

"Maybe later," Tetsuya murmurs again.

Gamma changes the subject, seeing as no parent has started panicking yet, so they have time until they have to chase down the DC leader. "So you've finished then, Fon?" he asks.

Everyone already knows the answer seeing as Gamma is Luche's second in command and she works with leading entire Patroller units, plus they can't keep anything from Aria. It was simply the first thing to come to Gamma's mind.

The Arcobaleno looks to him and smiles. "Yes, the safe zones have connected." Fon's smile grows. "We just have Tokyo now."

Tokyo, since it's so large and populated, became the last to deal with. With a population before the outbreak of approximately 38 million, even the most optimistic see it as a suicide mission to enter.

When they first reached the city, they carved a wide circumference around it and installed the pressure fences that used to be around the starting of Namimori. Then they dropped speakers around the middle that work with solar power so the noise doesn't die.

The music from the speakers attracted the majority of the infected to keep them away from the border where Namimori is. People are kept away from it as well and Patrollers set up a fixed unit around the fence as an immediate response team.

After the security was set up, Namimori spread around the large city and washed over the rest of Japan. When Fon's Berserker group met up with the main safe zone edge, it became apparent that Tokyo was the last remaining site with infected.

The speed at which Namimori moves might have been outrageous to any outsider, but Gamma has long been used to the terrifying competence in which the safe zone is run with.

Over the months since the outbreak, it's become easier to roll out Patrollers and have them clear entire cities. It was slow at first because of the small amount of volunteers and because most didn't know how to fight, but since then the job has gained a certain appeal which calls more people to it and the start-up training has become more streamline.

So the fact that they're almost done, three months and three weeks into the outbreak, isn't shocking at all.

"I've always wanted to visit Tokyo," Luche comments with a sweet giggle.

The people around the group of five take large steps back when the bloodlust of Luche washes over them.


	26. make

Hana strides through the doors of the radio tower, pressing the button to call a lift impatiently. She clutches the papers in her hand tighter, the material crumpling under her grip.

Whenever she closes her eyes she can see the speech prepared, word for word. She was one of the people who wrote it after all, and it was incredibly difficult to keep it short while also staying at the level people would expect from a teenager.

It's kind of ridiculous how the DC can still pull out the 'we're just teenagers' masks despite everything they've done. People fall for it as well, puffing up in confidence when they get hit in the face with that fact, because then they think 'if kids can manage this, we're fine'.

The consensus among the adults that are used to being in positions of power –either new to Namimori or just stubborn and delusional- is that the Disciplinary Committee is only being humoured at this point in time, and soon enough the adults will take over again and set things to 'the way they should be'.

They still believe -despite seeing the reality with their own eyes- that adults can lead better and give people a greater chance at survival. The more outspoken ones continuously try to take over operations in a DC members place or they'll claw up the ladder in their industry and start trying to change things.

They're the minority though, barely heard through all the praise the Disciplinary Committee are getting. Their methods never work either because the DC are ruthless when people get in the way of their jobs.

However, even in the rest of the population, there's always just that little voice at the back of the adults' heads that says the DC are children, most of them still in middle school, and if they falter the women and men can pick it up and rule even better simply because they have experience where the kids don't – and this gives them confidence.

The Namimori town natives think it's funny, how delusional some people can be.

The shiny metal doors of the elevator glide open soundlessly and she steps in, pressing the number for the top floor. While she waits she scans the speech in her hands.

* * *

_My name is Kusakabe Tetsuya and I'll be speaking on the behalf of all of the Disciplinary Committee._

_It's been four months since the outbreak, since Namimori first became a safe zone, and since the effort to make Japan an infected-free place first started._

_The situation has gotten to the point where Tokyo is the only infected area left, and it's long past the time to deal with it._

_This is not a sudden decision, as Tokyo has been debated and planed over from the very start, even when the Namimori safe zone was still confined to a middle school. We're going into this completely aware of what awaits us._

_We are ready. We cannot be more prepared to take on this mission._

_This plan has been building for a while. People participating already know their role in this conflict. Everything is set up to begin and even outside resources have been called in._

_The outside soldiers will arrive in groups throughout the next few days and by next week we'll open the fence and begin to clean Tokyo._

_Some of you have expressed interest in joining as Patrollers for this. We'd like to announce that only trained individuals are going to be allowed access past the pressure fences._

_As you all know, infected hold strength without human limits placed on them. They never get tired and they will do anything they can to reach a target, regardless of injury to themselves. Most of all, they are very, very hungry._

_It's something people tend to forget, surrounded by Namimori and safety. There have been no deaths relating to infected in Namimori since its founding, and sometimes people forget that there is a very large threat out there that humans can actually die from._

_Stories of people like our very own Chairman spread, and most don't remember that even one infected usually overpowers an average human easily._

_The Patrols so far have been in a controlled environment, despite being away from Namimori borders. The chopper runs keep numbers down, and even despite that, populations we've seen so far can't stand up against Tokyo._

_This is a risky operation and we ask all of you not entering to stay far away from the pressure fence, to keep yourselves safe and to keep the Patrollers from being distracted._

_The Chairman has said there will be no casualties, so there will be no casualties._

* * *

Hana looks up from the speech and steps out through the opening elevator doors before she strides down the hallway and pushes open the door to the studio.

Everywhere over Namimori people are switching on their radios and listening intently to the private channel being broadcasted solely over Japan. The Vice-Chairman Tetsuya is the one giving the announcement, and all over, the safe zone falls into stasis as they wait with bated breath.

Hana watches through the glass of the radio booth as Tetsuya scans the speech once more. He looks up and the red On Air light blinks to life. He turns his focus to the microphone and Hana gestures him to start even though he isn't look at her. It's a good speech; brief but informative, factual but emotive.

She sees him drop the papers back to the table and Hana tenses.

"Don't do it," Hana mutters in horror. "Don't say it, stick with the script."

"Sometime last night," Tetsuya begins calmly. "Hibari Kyouya left Namimori and entered Tokyo, alone."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That speech was so bad and I don't care. Please just pretend that it was dramatic and heartfelt.


	27. them

"Decimo!"

Tsuna's sigh is inaudible over the engines of the jumbo jet. He turns to face Basil, the teen weaving around adults in suits (because some mafia traditions are hard to break).

"I'm not the Decimo," Tsuna says when the other reaches him. "I'm just helping."

"Sorry, Decimo," Basil says, not sorry at all. "Everything has been okayed and take off is soon."

"Alright," Tsuna murmurs. It's been two days since the Chairman of Namimori vanished and Tsuna has only just managed to get his men and women prepared and into the plane.

He goes through a mental checklist. Everyone knows their job, their team mates, and their end goal. Tsuna lets out a deep breath and scans his soldiers. He wonders if Hibari Kyouya fell into the role like Tsuna did.

When the outbreak hit Japan, Tsuna and his mother were already on a plane to Italy, curtesy of Tsuna's 'construction worker' father. Who turned out to be commander of CEDEF. Tsuna and his mother landed in a private airport and were immediately rushed past the chaos of infected by a large team of men and women who all carried guns and weren't afraid to use them.

Tsuna thought he was lucky that his father took him away from Namimori and into a place with trained adults. The Vongola and CEDEF all locked down the Vongola mansion fairly early, at the cost of shutting out the world around them and ignoring the thousands of deaths happening just past their doors – though no one seemed to feel bad because they were mafia after all.

It was difficult to live in such conditions. Infected were constantly at the property's edges, and always finding ways inside by smashing through windows. They lost so many in the first few weeks.

Almost every supply run brought bad news, either of another death or of not enough food or they didn't come back at all. No one could sleep, constantly aware of the corpses outside, and always feeling the gnawing hunger and thirst.

Vongola was a huge mansion, enough to comfortably fit the thousands of people inside, but the utilities cut off and not enough supplies were stored up beforehand. They were mafia, they'd been through worse, but the situation took its toll. They didn't know if anyone survived, but they did know that every country had been decimated.

It was only two months in that they got a Namimori broadcast. They heard about the Patrollers and the steady march across Japan as well as how infected were ripped apart for daring to get in the way.

They were stunned. Because how did a small town in Japan manage to not only beat back the infected, but flourish and spread?

Every week, the Namimori stations would have professionals describe how to make the pipes start again, how to fix generators to get the most out of them, and other essential DIYs. So the Vongola stopped hiding and used the resources they had at their fingertips. They pushed back the hoards outside until the entire property was cleaned, and then they started on the rest of Italy.

They pushed back far enough that they eventually found mass graves of infected, most having bullet wounds straight through the forehead with perfect aim. When the information got back to Timoteo, the man laughed in relief and said something about a Xanxus.

They started up communication with Namimori, and even had a team of cream armbands sent to them, headed by a DC.

Unfortunately, because it was a DC -who of course was a teenager- the adults became condescending and sneered every time they got an order. People listened to most but they still dismissed the ideas that would take effort, like having more people in the supply runs or having special groups to hunt down large hoards before they got close.

The Namimori group was given a single room in the furthest corner of the mansion and the supplies from the Japanese safe zone were all taken by the Italians, with scraps left for the Patrollers.

A week went by and eventually the Namimori group refused to put up with it. The adults sneered and muttered insults loudly enough that the Namimori heard, telling them to leave if they couldn't take it.

Hibari Kyouya landed a few hours later.

The first to try and insult him was promptly thrown out of a five storey window, the toss making the adult smash into the newly built water tank, causing the flimsy structure to collapse and the water gathered to flood out.

"You're a civilian!" blurted out another one of the troublemakers. "You can't do that!"

The adult was immediately used to break the only other water tank. Kyouya told them to build it again, competently this time. Then he ordered care packages from Japan to be stopped. When someone complained, Kyouya calmly explained that if the adults couldn't take it, then they could beg and maybe Namimori might consider it.

Kyouya corralled half of the Italian safe zone and kicked them out of the Vongola gates, telling them that if they didn't have enough food to last the entire population for a fortnight by the time they came back, none of them were being let in.

People protested again, of course. The Chairman literally gave them no time at all to get ready or pack supplies for the trip. Kyouya kicked the loudest hard in the abdomen and they collapsed to their knees before vomiting.

"If you have enough food in you to throw up, you'll be fine," Kyouya drawled. "Now get out before I become annoyed."

No one spoke up that time.

Kyouya grabbed another half out of the remaining and ordered them into the largest training room the Vongola mansion had, following them inside with a call over his shoulder, telling his Patrollers to organise the rest into proper lookouts.

"And you," Kyouya began, turning to face Tsuna. "You're Namimori. Come with me."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told you Tsuna would show up eventually. And look, chapter 27 as well.


	28. all

Kyouya dragged Tsuna around with him as he and the other Namimori Patrollers forced the Italians to learn how to survive. They were taught combat, of course, but a majority of the focus was on how to efficiently build or fix the necessities that a safe zone needed.

It rained on a rest day and people grinned at each other, most staring out of windows at the rain tank they finally got up. Kyouya abruptly swooped in with tonfas bared like fangs and chased most of them outside. They gaped at him and some pointed out that the rain was going make them sick.

Kyouya didn't let them in, actually locking down the mansion after he had chased out all of the mafia adults. Nana poked her head out of a second storey window and waved cheerfully at Iemitsu, who didn't seem to care about the rain at all, and was actually staring up at her with love struck eyes like in a clichéd romantic movie.

Tsuna watched the group outside looked wet and miserable (apart from Iemitsu) and then flicked a glance to Kyouya who rolled his eyes and nodded at Tsuna. The brunet quickly rushed over to his mother and whispered in her ear.

Nana perked up and smiled at Tsuna before turning to the window once more. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if we had more tanks?" she called out to Iemitsu happily.

The adults all stalled for a second then snap into gear. They made for the storage room, which they found unlocked in a pointed fashion, and it took only an hour to set up seven new tanks, the speed from experience in building (because Kyouya kept destroying them via thrown adults).

Only when they ran out of material to build with did Kyouya open the doors.

The rain spluttered out long after every tank was overflowing and they trooped out to pour the water into containers, working quickly in case Kyouya hurled someone at a tank.

The next day the outside half returned with a swagger to their steps and arms laden with food. Previous supply runs stayed close to the mansion, which meant that the stores they take from had less and less each time. Other groups sent out before were also very small in number to keep the potential death count low.

This run, they moved much further out, confident with literally having an army of people. The supplies brought back could feed the entire compound for over a month even if they held feasts every day.

Kyouya rolled his eyes, pointed at Tsuna, declared him official Namimori trainer, and was on the next plane out with his Patrollers.

Tsuna spluttered and flailed but Kyouya had grabbed him that first day and Tsuna was forced to shadow the Chairman. He had thought it rather strange why Kyouya was explaining his actions, especially to Tsuna of all people, but now it made sense.

That was how it started. He spoke with the DC, told his father and helped implement the new tactics. Tsuna's dad patted him on the head and suddenly he was assigned a small group for a supply run, then next time it was a bigger group that would take care of a large hoard not too far off, and it escalated until he was standing right beside his father.

His word became something to follow and trust in, and Tsuna would have been freaking out, but the whole zombies situation was far more terrifying and even that became natural after a while.

Timoteo picked up on Tsuna's doings, and while the Vongola and CEDEF weren't exactly separate, there was a clear change when Nono passed over some Vongola for Tsuna to command on another supply run.

Then people started calling him Decimo, and it honestly took Tsuna a while to understand that they weren't just joking around. He tried to correct them but neither Timoteo nor Iemitsu were helping and the title stuck.

He was good at it though, which was the most shocking to Tsuna. He picked the right choices and made split second decisions that saved lives. He grew confident and could stand tall in front of the people he commanded.

The combined mafia group spread over Italy, picking up any survivors they found. A unit of Patrollers still occasionally dropped in, sifting through the plans implemented without any objections or resistance from the mafiosi (no one wanted another Kyouya visit), and fixed some parts while tweaking others until the Italian safe zone was running smoothly.

There was trouble of course, because almost all of the survivors were mafia and while most were allies of Vongola, some weren't. There had been a few cases of sabotage where the power sources broke down, and once a hoard of zombies was lead in. Tsuna had planted his feet and barked out orders, the situation eventually controlled via liberal use of head trauma.

It got worse and worse but Nono, Iemitsu and Tsuna were all reluctant to sift through so many people to find the traitor in their midst because that would call for a heavy hand and they didn't want to turn into one of the ridiculously brutal groups the Namimori radio detailed sometimes.

Then the Varia commanders strolled in one day.

No one had any time to react before the group was wreaking havoc and ripping through the ranks until they found the small cell of traitors, who Xanxus then lined up in a row, proclaiming that he bet he could shoot through all of their skulls with one bullet.

Tsuna stepped into the way, ignoring his father's flailing in the background, and said outright that death was far too extreme.

"Where are you from?" Xanxus demanded, his hand unwavering from where it was pointing straight at Tsuna's head since the teen stepped in front of the line-up.

"I lived in Namimori before this," Tsuna answered, rather confused at the perfectly reasonable tone the scarred man had. He expected insanity from the way the man bulldozed his way through, snarling insults.

"Figures," Xanxus scoffed. "That little feral trash probably got his claws into you."

Tsuna blinked in shock as Xanxus lowered his gun and the Varia group sauntered back out of the Italian safe zone. He had no idea that the Varia boss was in contact with Kyouya but somehow that made sense.

Tsuna shakes the all the past memories away and scans the plane to check for any problems, something he's gotten used to since Kyouya would hit him with tonfas every time he missed an issue (most of them caused by the Chairman himself). It doesn't matter that Tsuna spent less than a week in the older teen's presence; you don't forget Hibari lessons.

Tsuna likes to think that he's doing well, and it's true that Italy (with the help of the Varia boss mostly) is becoming an entirely infected free zone. It's not like Tsuna could compare himself to Kyouya though, considering how different their situations are.

Tsuna has proper leaders to fall back on when he can't make a decision or he doesn't understand something, and he also commands fully trained adults who know how to fight and know how to survive.

On the other hand, Kyouya is  _the_ leader. He's the person people turn to when they don't know what to do. Not to mention the teenager built Namimori using other middle schoolers as a backbone, and then he had to train others into competency so he could make a proper army to defend the safe zone.

As it is, Italy is hovering between states of being 'just a large group of survivors doing their own thing', and 'an actual system'. While Namimori has already flourished into a full grown country with different industries and an economy, the Italian safe zone is barely surpassing Middle Ages.

So yeah, of course Tsuna sees Kyouya as the ideal, and maybe he's tried to model himself after the Chairman. However, Tsuna knows enough to realise that he can only be himself, and he's okay with that.

Tsuna was devastated when Kusakabe Tetsuya announced the Chairman was missing. Well, not missing because everyone knows where he is, but 'in danger' – for a given value of danger.

Tsuna was immediately on board, and while both Nono and Iemitsu didn't want to waste resources and man power on helping Namimori, Tsuna convinced them that if Namimori fell they were fucked too.

"We're landing, Tenth," Basil says. "Better grab a seat or hold onto something."

Tsuna lets out a deep breath, looking around again to where people are sleeping or stretching out sore muscles from sitting so long. The flight from Italy to Japan is twelve hours, and Tsuna knows it can't go any faster but he's still worried.

It's now been three days since the Chairman went missing, and a lot can happen in a city like Tokyo with that many infected.

Tsuna promises to himself that he'll find Kyouya and keep the teenager safe.


	29. burn.

Tsuna arrives from Italy, and on his request, is placed into a specific group that stands apart from the main ones. The group is supposed to take off on day four of the Chairman leaving, which makes Tsuna wants to pull his hair out. Kyouya could be in serious trouble but people only look mildly concerned at most.

He does understand why they need to wait, because finding one person in a city the size of Tokyo is like finding a slightly smaller needle in a pool full of them, so co-ordinates are necessary before they do anything. However, Tsuna can't help his worry.

He spends the time distracting himself with organising his troops into something half resembling the neat units of Patrollers that Namimori has. Truthfully, the Italian safe zone just points at people and sends them out to do what they will instead of assigning power levels or routes.

He wakes up on day four and has two hours to get ready before he's shoved into a small crowd of people hovering around some very fast cars.

He recognises most and wonders how the hell Namimori managed to get these people to join. The group is made of insanely dangerous powerhouses that do not work as a team what so ever.

The Varia are gazing rather longingly at a sleek black camaro, and Tsuna even finds the Arcobaleno (sans Luche and Verde) playing rock paper scissors for a red Ferrari. A blond with a whip at his side is trying to climb into a car but four other suited adults are dragging him away.

A red haired male Tsuna's age is trying to mediate between a group of other teens and failing. A white haired one with a bag of marshmallows is ordering around others, all of them with exasperated expressions.

A purple teen with a strange chuckle is scanning another car further away with two other males, one a blond and the other wearing glasses.

Tsuna ends up standing with a smaller group in Patroller uniforms, Takeshi and Ryohei he recognises from before he left Namimori, while Hayato and Lambo introduce themselves as mafia.

"Kyouya is moving according to predictions so it's okay to begin," Verde proclaims.

They're given backpacks full of food and water while those who use bullets, knives or dynamite have another bag to carry with extra stock.

As a last step, the scientist explains the set up inside Tokyo. He tells them that the very centre has large speakers set up playing music to keep the infected away from the border where Namimori stands and that smaller speakers are scattered in a wider radius to reach further.

Kyouya took his infected with him (and Tsuna got a very quick rundown as to what that means – Jesus Christ) so while the Chairman will be on the street and fighting freely wandering zombies, the lilac infected are moving through buildings and opening doors for more infected to get loose. This method saves time and clears out the zombies quicker.

Verde says the estimated amount of infected is anywhere between 30 to 25 million, and that's an incredibly optimistic guess. To not get stuck in a pile of bodies or have to manuver on top, Kyouya will most likely be moving in a spiral out from the centre to best keep the corpses isolated.

Therefore, Tsuna and the rest will be driving into the middle, cutting a straight line from one point of Namimori's border. It's the least infested route since Kyouya would have taken out most of the infected in that area as he travelled.

They all nod at the information and enter the cars. The racing car shoots off and quickly disappears in the distance as well as a few other sports cars.

"So how do you know Kyouya?" Takeshi asks with curiosity, glancing sideways at Tsuna, both of them in the backseat.

The brunet blinks in shock but the menacing aura from the other teen is gone in a split second so maybe Tsuna is just imagining things. "Well, he…" Tsuna trails off then, not really sure how to describe it.

"Yeah, he does that a lot," Lambo speaks up from behind the wheel.

The rest nod in sympathy and Tsuna feels like they'll be great friends.

It becomes quickly blatant that Kyouya indeed travelled the same path, seeing as they encounter mass graves. At some points the amount of corpses reaches over chest height on Tsuna and the largest spans six entire city blocks in every direction. Hayato can be heard murmuring as they pass by, quickly estimating numbers in the higher three digits for every one they encounter.

They shoot the odd infected group wandering around but never anything close to a hoard. It's at least twenty minutes out from the centre by the time faint music reaches them through open windows. As they get closer, the barely there sound turns into a ground thumping, bone rattling level, all from the large speaker set up in the middle of the street.

"That bastard," Hayato grumbles when they get near enough to see. "How that hell are we supposed to catch up to his count now?"

What Verde said about the spiral might be true, but all Tsuna could see was destruction. The buildings seem to have large bites take out of them, maybe half the size of a small car, near the bases – not enough to destabilise them but enough that Tsuna has to wonder what caused the damage.

Tsuna has no idea where the middle is, and most of the speakers are buried under infected, their sound far more muffled. It reaches taller than Takeshi and slides down slowly over eleven blocks to knee height then another two blocks until the infected are simply scattered lightly across the ground.

Tsuna has no idea how many Kyouya has already taken out, he just knows that the Chairman won't stop unless he's forced to.

They find the racing vehicle with Skull inside parked to the side of the road with the other fast cars that disappeared at the start. Tsuna's car slows to a stop and an explanation is shouted, barely loud enough to be heard over the music and the occasional gun fire from Reborn who is taking out zombies appearing from around corners.

"Kyouya must be on another side," Byakuran half signs to be understood. "The blood is barely dry, so he's fine."

"We'll go meet him," Mukuro shouts and gestures Ken and Chikusa to get back in the car.

The rest of them seem to shrug and Tsuna slides back into the car with everyone else. Mukuro leads the way this time, and they circle the destruction zone around two blocks out so they don't have to run over bodies.

They pass four speakers until Fon's car puts on hazard lights and comes to a stop.

The rest of them follow and park the cars again, emerging and looking around. It's pretty much the same setting as the other one, with the mountain of bodies and the speaker which is around two meters tall, one meter across, and half a meter deep.

"Is he sleeping?" Mukuro abruptly asks no one in particular.

Tsuna blinks and tries to follow the purple haired teen's line of sight but the other must have super vision or something because Tsuna can't see anything.

It's only when he gets closer that Tsuna notices the figure lying on top of the speaker.


	30. Then

Kyouya is on his back, with a foot planted on the speaker's top so his leg is bent, and his other leg is crossed over it. As they walk towards him, his arms reach for the sky, a rifle held steady as it points straight up.

It fires once, the sound lost under the ground shaking dubstep blaring from the speaker. Kyouya sits up, his legs falling over the front of the speaker and the gun coming to rest on his lap. The teen doesn't look injured in anyway which is a huge relief for Tsuna.

Kyouya blinks at them in confusion, probably wondering why they're here since the actual Tokyo mission is supposed to be at the end of the week. He pulls out earplugs that had been blocking the loud music and lets them hang around his neck on a simple cord.

Fon speeds up, a smile on his face, but abruptly comes to a halt like the rest of them when Kyouya holds up a hand in the universal stop sign.

It's a count of two until a blur smashes head first against the pavement not a meter from Fon, splattering gore and spilling out over the tarmac.

Fon stares down at the zombie, the head and torso completely unrecognisable from the impact, but the bullet hole through a knee is easily identified as Kyouya's shot.

Fon looks back up at Kyouya and smiles just a bit too wide.

The next half an hour consists of a steady stream of zombies, and entertainment by way of Fon wrestling Kyouya to the floor with help from Namimori Patrollers. Then it's twenty minutes of first asking, then threatening, then begging until the boy stops squirming.

They grab him and drag him off into a building already cleaned out, presumably by a lilac infected, shoving him onto a bed in a random room of the hotel and forcing water and food onto him. He takes the meal with an eye roll but as soon as he finishes it, he passes out from exhaustion.

Kyouya has been in the city for four days, and it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that he never stopped fighting for even a minute. That's eighty-six hours now and countless infected.

It was never about the risk of Kyouya getting overwhelmed by the millions of infected in Tokyo, although that was a real concern. What they were hoping to stop, was the teenager overworking himself until his body just shut down.

"So this is our base then?" Lal muses, looking around at the hotel room.

The door to the bedroom has been politely shut to muffle their conversation even though Kyouya has his noise cancelling earplugs in. They're now standing around the living room, poking around the place while their gear is being retrieved from cars by Byakuran's group.

"Not very defensive," Adelheid comments.

"Well if we kill all the infected, there's no need to defend it from anything," Lussuria laughs lightly but there's an eager look to his eyes as he peers out of the balcony's glass doors.

The same sense of expectation is coming from the rest.

"Who's going to be staying with him?" Tsuna speaks up, staring at the closed bedroom door.

"If I must," Mukuro begins in a long-suffering tone. "I would hate to make someone else stay behind and miss out on killing infected."

No one believes his earnest tone.

It's voted that Ryohei will stay with Kyouya since the teenager knows first aid in case Kyouya is hiding injuries, isn't known for propositioning the Chairman, and won't knock the teenager out when he wakes to keep him away from zombies like Fon will.

Tsuna doesn't comment at all, because it's just safer to stay ignorant, and has to usher everyone out when the infected start gathering into a large group outside the building. They reach the street and find more pouring in with every second.

They get to work, because the longer they wait, the more Kyoya has to deal with when he wakes up.

Or that's what Tsuna assumes.

What actually happens is that everyone in the group has some twisted part of themselves that became more and more excited with every mass grave they passed and now they can finally cut loose and add to the body count, because like hell Kyouya is going to win the competition.

They break away in smaller groups or by themselves, and start racing for who can kill the most, none of them at all concerned for anyone else or the sudden influx of infected.

Tsuna stays near the four he was in the car with, and most of them are laughing as they slaughter zombies. While Tsuna gets an adrenalin rush, he doesn't enjoy killing to the point of manic glee like these people.

At least, he didn't think he did.

However, he starts counting because everyone else is and finds himself tying with Hayato who is winning with the massive blast zone of his dynamite. Tsuna shouts out his next kill count over the noise of the speaker and the infected, and gets wide eyed looks.

He can't help the grin that creeps over his face and soon he's laughing along with them when Takeshi's sword gets stuck in a rib cage and the teenager has to use the dead body as a mace.

Tsuna's group meets others a few times, and he gets really competitive when he hears counts higher than his, to the point that he'll race for infected, actually leap frogging over Xanxus at one point to get to the one sneaking up on the Varia boss.

Tsuna gets cussed out for that, but before Xanxus turns his attention from zombies to humans, Reborn swaggers up, calmly drawls out three digits in the higher range, and leaves both Tsuna and Xanxus to glare after the hitman.

It's seven hours later that Tsuna's group starts to seriously debate hunting down the lilac zombies to make them stop opening buildings. They're all exhausted by the time the sun sets but they don't stop until proper night falls. They retreat back to the building, assured that the infected will be more focused on the speakers than anything else.

They find Kyouya still asleep but showered and in pyjamas. They trudge over to their packs to drink and eat before taking showers and stealing clothes left behind during the outbreak to sleep in.

They stay in the same room because if infected do break in, it will be easier to defend.

Or that's what Tsuna assumes.


	31. can

Tsuna wakes in the morning of Kyouya's fifth day in Tokyo to Mukuro's low hiss of anger. The brunet jerks upright and finds Kyouya nowhere to be seen. Hayato is the first to get to the window and the rest follow, peering down at the street.

Before, it was only scattered with bodies, but now it drowns under corpses. It reaches down another four blocks and tapers off again to knee height.

"Should have tied him to the bed," Byakuran comments.

"Sure," Lambo drawls. "Because I would definitely be able to live without my intestines."

"Why would he go for the intestines?" Colonnello speaks up.

"Sorry, I meant 'without my digestive system and my cardiovascular system and my'-"

"We get it," Squalo interrupts. "The kid likes ripping people apart, let's leave it at that."

They eat and change into their gear, taking the packs and finding a cleared hotel again before setting up a room. Then they hunt down Kyouya as a large group.

The day ends up being much like the last, except now everyone is competing with Kyouya. The teen moves fast and takes down double the amount of even Xanxus thanks to the teenager's experience, which pisses the mafia boss off.

Tsuna has to step in, not once or twice, but three times to separate them when they start fighting each other instead of the zombies. It isn't even proper fighting either, it's like little children playing in snow.

"Why!?" Tsuna screams in despair, throwing his arms up when Kyouya once again pops up behind an abandoned car and tosses a ball of gore at Xanxus. "What purpose does this serve? There are millions of infected in Tokyo and you're playing in the remains of human beings who deserve respect-"

Tsuna cuts off suddenly when a ball of gore splatters across his shoulders. He stills and then whirls around only to find Reborn pointing at a snickering Skull. The stuntman stops laughing immediately when Tsuna faces them and then splutters when he notices Reborn's accusation.

"I didn't do it!" Skull cries.

"Then why were you laughing?" Reborn asks rhetorically, turning to walk away.

Tsuna crouches for a barely a second and then takes two running steps, hurling the ball of gore he scooped up that squelches and falls apart as it collides with Reborn's back. The hitman jerks to a stop and peers over his shoulder at his now ruined suit in confusion like he isn't quite sure how it was possible to hit him.

"Okay, now no more," Tsuna orders, and then starts sprinting before Reborn can snap out of his shock.

The fourth time Xanxus and Kyouya clash, Tsuna is distracted with not dying via hitman, so he can't stop the two before it escalates. Eventually every single person gets sucked into it, and teams are formed for a 'snowball' war which then somehow turns to a sculpture competition. Tsuna doesn't even bother to fight it when he is presented with a decapitated head curtesy of Mukuro because apparently the brunet made the best 'snowman'.

"I'd like to thank my mum and my dad," Tsuna begins, holding up the head like he's just won an award. "For raising me to follow my dreams."

The rest politely clap his speech.

However, Kyouya soon gets annoyed at the crowd and tells them to split up instead of following him. Fon refuses to leave but the rest are shooed away on threat of Kyouya stealing all the zombie kills and winning the race.

Fon has to physically pick Kyouya up and carry him to the hotel at the end of the day because otherwise he won't stop hunting down the zombies.

Then it's a weird mix of frustration and amusement when they all try to work out how the hotel laundry system works so they can wash the 'snow' off their clothes. They fall asleep, with Kyouya's left wrist chained to a bed post and seven people holding onto a part of him. He still manages to sneak away.

* * *

On the sixth day of Kyouya's Tokyo tour, Tsuna is watching closely and stops any 'snowballs'. Around noon they retreat back into the hotel and Kikyo volunteers with Enma to make everyone lunch. During the veritable feast, they get five choppers sent in, all with a pyro team who burns the corpses to ash.

They emerge from lunch and keep going with now clean streets. It takes not three minutes for the roads to be littered in corpses once more. Then Kyouya's back up team of zombies arrive, which numbers in the forties, and he sends them into more buildings which increases the load by over five times.

That night they shove Kyouya into an industrial freezer.

It's not on, so instead of being below zero it's just a large metal box that will make sure Kyouya sleeps for more than four hours.

Byakuran volunteers to go inside with the Chairman because 'Kyouya might get lonely'. Xanxus punches him in the face and when the rest of the Varia snicker, he starts throwing alcohol at people. Tsuna has no idea where the man gets the bottles from but he's also kind of distracted with the abrupt battle royal.

They wake in the morning to find the other side of the freezer, and thus the building's outside wall, torn open like tissue paper with Kyouya most definitely missing.

* * *

The end of the week announces the proper starting time for the Tokyo mission and information comes back about the other teams, how they're cleaning buildings as well.

More than half of Namimori's Patroller units are one stripe, and they line up just inside the pressure fence and stop any infected from leaving, while also slowly cleaning the buildings to work their way inwards.

The Italian group and the two stripes or higher move inside the city in spokes to scan through all of the streets for hoards that they take out. Hot spots where building are full of them are also cleaned, and any civilians are sent back with armoured cars.

The humans settle into a routine, and the pressure fence is moved daily, slowly pushing past Tokyo borders and into the city itself as the infected become less and less.

Kyouya's group and the main army eventually meet up, four and a half months since the outbreak, and as the hundreds of Patrollers and Mafiosi stream past and into buildings to find survivors or doors that can't be opened by the lilac infected, Tetsuya steps up to Kyouya.

"Congratulations, Chairman," Tetsuya says with an easy smile. "You have Japan." His grin spreads to show too many teeth and his eyes gain an eager bloodlust. "Shall we start on the rest of the world?"


	32. I

"Hey, everyone!" Takeshi cries happily into the microphone, relaxing back into the chair. "I've been away for a while, occupied in Tokyo with the rest of the Patrollers." He huffs in laughter. "I guess I have a lot of school work to catch up on."

The half-hearted laugh trails off.

"I don't… know how to say this," he says slowly. "So I guess I'll just speak plainly."

* * *

Shoichi slumps back in his seat, Verde on one side and Spanner on the other as they listen to the radio host.

" _We have Japan."_

Smiles bloom on the inventors' faces.

* * *

A shocked laugh escapes the radio speakers, echoed by Kensuke. His little brother reaches across the dinner table to turn up the volume.

" _That's… that's it, I don't know how I can explain that in any other way."_

* * *

" _We have Japan,"_  the radio host repeats.

Tetsuya smiles and raises a toast with the rest of the Disciplinary Committee. It's been a while since they were all in the same place and it's good to catch up with each other.

* * *

"Namimori has Japan," Takeshi corrects, staring sightlessly into the microphone, rolling that thought around his mind.

Tsuyoshi places a hand on his son's back, sitting in a chair beside the teen. They grin at each other.

* * *

" _Namimori_ is _Japan."_

Mukuro rolls his eyes at the dramatics, but he can't keep the smile from his face anyway. Chrome rests her head against his shoulder, having returned home a few hours into the Disciplinary Committee's party, and in the background Ken and Chikusa argue over the last slice of cake.

* * *

Laughter builds, and it's incredulous and sounds like a kid was just handed a huge bag of cash.

Colonnello swings Lal around the living room to inaudible music and brings her down into a dip, planting a kiss onto her smiling mouth.

Skull makes loud, grossed out sounds from the couch until Oodaku grabs his arm and yanks him backwards into the large glass tank that serves as home for the octopus. Skull hugs back until he runs out of air and has to resurface.

Fon smiles at the two dancing, while still racing Mammon in a game of speed poker.

* * *

" _We did it, everyone! We cleaned the entirety of Japan."_

Enma barely hears the words over how loud his friends are, and he loses track of the radio when his little sister launches herself at him and demands a piggy back ride. His parents, snapping pictures of absolutely everything, do nothing to help Enma.

* * *

" _I mean, yeah, I was expecting it. But it's only hitting me now."_

Lambo ducks the dumpling and pops up from behind his barrier, pegging a handful of noodles at I-pin with a huge grin on his face.

Fuuta smacks him in the side of the head with bacon, but Lambo isn't complaining.

* * *

" _Holy. Shit."_

Ryohei quickly lunges across the room, dumping a rather startled Hana out of his lap as he puts both hands over Kyoko's ears at the swearing.

Hana drags him away from his laughing sister by the ear.

* * *

" _Just – just everyone, thank you so much."_

Hayato grumbles but hugs Bianchi back nonetheless, her goggles pressing into his shoulder. Shamal tries to join the group hug but both siblings punch him in the throat.

* * *

" _And Kyouya, you insane monster, never change."_

"Amen to that," Byakuran laughs and has to tilt his head to the side so he could catch a marshmallow thrown at him by Bluebell with his mouth.

A beat later and all of his guardians' throws hit him in the face, the fluffy treats bouncing off Byakuran merrily.

* * *

Takeshi laughs again, wild and unrestrained.

Chrome rolls her eyes this time, more at Chikusa using his yoyos as a garrote to choke Ken.

Mukuro taps her on the shoulder and points out of the window where bright splashes of colour appear in the night sky, accompanied by the bang that all fireworks carry.

* * *

" _Zombies? Yeah, sure. Apocalypse?"_  the laughter from the radio builds.

"It's only an infestation!" Dino and the rest of his Chiavarone chime in with Takeshi and collapse over each other laughing, already completely drunk.

* * *

" _To those of you listening from outside of Namimori, I'd just like to say; Japan is here, and it's entirely zombie free."_

Xanxus roars in anger when Squalo wins again. "Fuck, I hate this stupid game," he snaps, tossing the remote down.

"My turn!" Belphegor cries, throwing himself over Xanxus' lap to reach the discarded item, but Fran gets there first.

"Don't be a sore loser, shitty boss," Squalo cackles. "No one can beat me at SSBB."

Bester huffs at Lussuria, the man only just taking out the curlers to reveal Bester's new, stylish fur.

* * *

" _But if you can't make it…"_

Gamma sways with Aria to a slow song, Yuni spinning around them both on Reborn's feet, the girl helplessly giggling as she's lead around in a fast paced waltz.

* * *

" _Well Namimori is going to start cleaning the rest of the world anyway."_

Hana frowns with her arms crossed but Ryohei's wide, sheepish smile makes her lean over to hug him in the end. Kyoko and Haru coo over the couple's adorableness loudly.

* * *

" _Just sit tight, because we've got a Disciplinary Committee."_

Tsuna smiles softly in his sleep, dreaming of a gentle warmth.

Nana and Iemitsu slowly retreat from the bedroom threshold, closing the door behind them after checking up on their son. They stare at each other with love filled eyes and head to the rooftop to star gaze.

* * *

The bright splashes of fireworks is a faint, far off light that doesn't illuminate the area at all. The noise can't seem to reach the place either. There are no crowds here, all of the Namimori citizens gathered with family and friends in the main streets to celebrate.

A still figure stands on the hill overlooking a gated ground, the surroundings empty and devoid of life. The long black coat blends in with the night, and a cold wind sweeps their hair to the side. They shiver but they don't move until dawn peaks over the horizon.


	33. be

They're not done, not really.

They've conquered Japan but that doesn't satisfy them enough. Maybe they've become greedy and arrogant, but each and every single person in Namimori has thought to themselves, at least once,  _I wonder how long it'll take until the infected are all gone?_

It's a light hearted and musing thought, as if they were absent mindedly wondering what the weather will be tomorrow. It's not an 'if' and not a 'maybe', it's a complete belief that zombies are heading towards their last days on earth.

You can't blame them though, for those thoughts, because not a week after the clearing of Japan, willing Patrollers switch out their lilac armbands for cream ones and take all of the appropriated aeroplanes overseas.

Patrollers land in already stable Namimori compounds and spread like wildfire into the country they picked. The Italians aren't far behind.

Most landing spots are like Japan in that they're separate from most of the world by consequence of being a small continent, simply so it's easier to clear it and not have to be on constant lookout for more infected wandering back in to safe zones. They clean Fiji, Ireland and Iceland and they keep going until even Australia is zombie free before starting on the larger continents.

In Japan, legitimate government starts up again, early because Kyouya outright refuses to deal with petty problems. Job sectors expand from just the necessities and all the damage to infrastructure is repaired.

Namimori (the actual town) is a major tourist spot. (And how amazing is it that they can have proper holidays again?) Or it is until Kyouya swoops in, changes a few border laws, and stops it.

People start thinking that maybe the teenager has too much power, but then they shrug it off and continue with their day.

Things slide back to normal except the world's population has shrunk significantly, the final say on anything is a teenager, and if someone starts up again with crime people laugh in their faces as they get hauled off to jail.

People are happy and they're content. Somewhere along the way the date Japan was fully cleared became an annual holiday. Someone starts a book holding all Patrollers and their stats, while the children start collecting trading cards, and the DC just roll their eyes.

The Chairman is often seen in the company of a rather strange group. One being the leader of Italy, Sawada Tsunayoshi, and the rest a curious mix of Patroller and civilian.

The second time the entire group meets, all personnel in Taiwan is extracted, because everyone still remembers the first time they got together in Tokyo. It's a wise decision because the group clear the country in a week, with prejudice, without a care for the buildings.

(Other countries prepare evacuation procedures in case the group enters their borders.)

So, yes, maybe they're being too optimistic by thinking that the zombies will be completely wiped out despite the world being so large and full of hiding places. Perhaps it's ridiculous to place faith in a child who acts so apathetic when he's not being a mass murderer.

But can you blame them?

Don't  _you_  think this will be a happy ending?

* * *

Longchamp Naito takes the hand held out to him and steps off the ramp to climb aboard the ship, the hoard of infected sprinting for him and his famiglia only held off by cream armbands.

A red armband passes him then, a hand politely raised as the teen yawns widely and looks as if he just woke up from a nap.

As Naito steps below deck, he pauses. It sounds like the infected are screaming… in fear?

* * *

The last three Vendice watch as the cargo plane flies over the mafia prison. The ramp opens and a group of Namimori clad in winter gear drop down into the snow to help clean out the prison full of infected. The sole red armband leads the group, passing Bermuda with a nod as greeting.

The last three Vendice fall into step behind the teenager. Their fellow prison guards all fell during the initial virus, and while they could have taken back Vendicare with a little effort, the three decided to cut their losses and move to a place that wasn't full of wandering infected.

However, the Namimori DC requested a place to keep the more dangerous criminals, and they agreed. They could have just wiped the prison themselves, but they're rather curious about Hibari Kyouya, so they asked for 'help'.

Kyouya glances over his shoulder as they all troop through the knee high snow and doesn't see people who need assistance. "If I get a higher count than you, I get to keep your coat."

Bermuda blinks and then laughs. "And when I win, I get complete access to DC information."

Kyouya nods and turns to face the large building appearing in the distance. He can already feel the soft fur of the Vendice coat's collar pressing into his neck.

* * *

Lal Mirch peers down the telescopic sight of her gun at the target. The figure turns, seemingly locking eyes with the sniper despite the woman being four blocks away on the roof of a six storey building.

The Chairman rolls his eyes and Lal bites her lip at being caught following the kid. Fon is definitely going to get a tonfa to the face when the teen gets back to Japan.

Lal keeps saying that Kyouya is fine by himself but Fon insists on sending an Arcobaleno to watch the kid a least once a fortnight. The rest don't mind, because Kyouya is always doing something interesting.

Reborn was there when a group of Patrollers went to Vendicare and the hitman ended up winning a coat.

* * *

Kawahira watches from the helicopter as his team of Pyros light up another mass grave. The boy sitting beside him rolls his shoulders, looking content at the large group he took down.

Kawahira pretends he doesn't see the boy staring and soon gets a small tug on his sleeve when the teen gets impatient. He turns to peer down at Kyouya and smiles at the expectant expression, taking out a bar of chocolate from his pocket.

The teen accepts the treat and immediately starts munching on it, the chocolate tasting like victory.

Kawahira looks back down, the flames only partly obscuring the image of a Go board that the zombies are arranged into.

"I thought you were an aggressive player," Kawahira admits. "You've played like that the last few games so I wasn't looking for traps."

Kyouya hums in satisfaction around the chocolate. He pulls away and licks his lips. "I am, but I needed a different approach for you."

Kawahira chuckles. "It won't work next time."

"You think I only have one surprise for you?" Kyouya replies, biting into the last piece of chocolate.

Kawahira smirks.

* * *

An undetermined time later, there's screaming far off in the distance.

It's out of overwhelming joy when Verde's radar can't pick up any more infected signals.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter and we're done!
> 
> Just as a little hint: ONLY after you finish the story, view the chapter titles all at once.


	34. forgiven?

"They're all gone now," Kyouya murmurs, his hand resting lightly on the gravestone. "I got rid of them for you."

He pauses and doesn't know what to say.

A cool wind keeps the heat from the sun at a nice warmth, and clouds lazily drift overhead. A large hill overlooks the gated grounds and trees border the edges. This place is a private cemetery for the Hibari family, and caretakers keep the gardens neat and clean.

He's never stepped foot in it before now, not even for the funeral, because he promised that the next time he saw them not a single infected would be left on this earth.

"I should have kept you with me," he says in a quiet voice. "But I made a mistake and you paid for it."

Kyouya hesitates when his memory conjures up a scene. He sees them being eaten right in front of him, screaming –screaming for Kyouya to save them- as they're torn apart.

Ever since their death during the outbreak, the image has been a constant whenever he closes his eyes.

It's all he saw every time he got annoyed at the crowding, or started dragging his feet regarding planning, or just wanted to leave and get away from the people watching him.

Everything Kyouya has done, and will do, is to apologise for not saving them.

"I'm sorry. I hope you can forgive me, Hibird."


End file.
